Baking bread with pure rye sourdough. No chemical additives, no yeast, just natural sourdough. Grandpa Wolfgang shows how it works. Recipe: Sourdough bread with rye 1. Increase the sourdough starter (at approx. 25-30 degrees in a ceramic pot with a lid over 1 to 3 days by adding rye flour and water. You can tell that it's working by the formation of bubbles and the pleasant smell. The consistency of the sourdough should be a thick porridge, not dough. At the end you should have about 1 kg of sourdough. 2. Sourdough is the basis of the bread and should make up about half of the bread mass. Before you start making the dough, make sure to measure two screw-top jars about half full and keep them in the fridge as a new starter. It will keep for 2-3 weeks, possibly even longer. Use one of the jars for reuse, the second one stays in the fridge as a "backup" and is only replaced the next time you bake. 3. Fill 1 kg of sourdough with 1 kg of rye flour in a large bowl (instead of 1 kg of rye flour, I use 500 g Wholemeal rye flour and 500 g rye flour) 4. Distribute spices and ingredients in the flour and mix. For each kilo of finished bread dough I use 1 tablespoon of salt, ½ tablespoon of spices, ½ tablespoon of oil. (Spices are crushed in a mortar: caraway, coriander, fennel, anise. I used to use a little honey, but I've left that out now because it has antibacterial properties, which my yeast might not like and because my yeast doesn't need sugar at all) 5. Add water to the amount of approx. 1 litre (lukewarm, not over 30 degrees) and mix with a sturdy wooden spoon. Add water to taste; it should be a sticky dough, not too firm, that sticks to your fingers. With rye flour you only need to mix, not extensive kneading like with wheat flour. 6. Once the dough is well mixed, lift it out of the bowl with a spatula and knead on flour to form two loaves of the same size. You can add some of the spices to the flour. 7. Line two proving baskets with tea towels and sprinkle with flour, put the dough pieces in the proving baskets and cover with the overhanging fabric and moisten a little with water. 8. Leave the proving basket to rise in a warm place (should be 25-30 degrees, definitely not more) for about 1.5 hours to 3 hours. 9. It is best to equip the oven with a pizza stone and preheat it to at least 250 degrees! If the oven cannot cope with this, 230 or 220 degrees will also work. 10. Carefully tip the dough pieces from the baskets onto the baking shovel. (The top of the proving basket will be the bottom of the bread). Cut the top of the dough pieces with a serrated knife, important so that the bread can expand during baking. 11. If possible, bake with climate cooking (3x steam) or with a metal bowl of water on the bottom for approx. 20 minutes at 250 degrees, then gradually reduce the temperature (after approx. 30 minutes to 230 degrees, bake the last 15 minutes at 200 degrees). Total baking time approx. 1 hour.