Riddle: What's the head of everything?

Focaccia, Pandesal, Prodja, Jewish Hala, Naan, Parotta, Pandebono, Turkish Simit, Lavash, Khachapuri, French baguette, Injera...the endless can go on! We call it "Karovai". Whatever you call it, it has the same meaning. There is no country in which it is not prepared. Have you already guessed what this article is about? Yes, my dear readers, the answer to this riddle is Bread.🍞

Bread is one of the most popular foods in the world. The flour for it is made from a variety of plants. But its importance in our lives doesn't change from that.

This short video just melted my heart...(famous soccer player Mesut Ozil, threw a piece of bread like a dog!!!! Look what he did to him next. I just can't help but admire and respect this man!!!!!!!)

And before I begin this article, I want to thank my sponsors.

Allow me to express my sincere, deep gratitude for your support and help, for your inestimable attention and human warmth! May your responsive heart be rewarded with the most generous gifts of nature: love, faith, friendship, mutual understanding and trust! May the good return to you with the good that your soul dreams of. Harmony and happiness to you. Thank you! 😘

"Bread is the head of everything. " Perhaps this is the most popular proverb about bread, however, its interpretation is not familiar to everyone. The importance of bread in people's lives is difficult to assess. Without it no meal, no feast, because bread - it is nourishing and useful. No matter how difficult or simple dishes were served, but bread was a must. Even if there was hunger, as long as there is something to bake bread with, you can live until the next harvest. Besides, it is worth remembering that many battles and wars began because of the fertile land on which wheat and rye were grown. If the enemy set fire to a field where rye was growing, he doomed the settlement to starvation. And so, in many political and military conflicts the reason was the desire to improve welfare, and therefore bread as a symbol of that welfare.

We have a tradition in our country: to welcome dear guests with bread and salt. This is what it looks like:

The guest should break (take a bite) of the bread presented, dip it in salt, and sit down. This means that the guest accepts our hospitality.

Since ancient times, only the head of the house, the "Bolshak," could distribute food among his relatives. This concerned, first of all, bread. Hence the custom: the eldest man in the house, cutting a loaf of bread, gave each member of the family his share. Only he had the right to interact with the bread and salt at the table. Also - he was the very first to start the meal!

Why was bread served with salt?

Bread was usually baked without salt because it was not only meant for the living, but also for the dead. Such bread had a higher status. Bread that had already been baked could be salted. This was done because salted bread was the food of humans. Such bread could not be offered to the ancestors.

On memorial and festive days and until now!!!! Reception of dear guests, weddings, days and on the day of the funeral, bread must necessarily be unleavened! Generally, in all bread baking, the first bread was meant for the ancestors. This is what our festive bread looks like, it can be insanely beautiful.And it is the festive bread in our country Ukraine, called "Korovay" and so it looks👇 approximately

Every real and hospitable hostess should know how to bake bread. I confess, I've been baking bread for many years - and I still don't really understand why we need precise bread recipes. It's not about what and how much to put in (unless you bake in a bread machine - mechanical devices and rigid programs are no joke), but to catch the signal coming from the dough: "I need more time", "it blows here", "where do you get this fig yeast?"😂 and "take me out soon, auntie, I'll burn!"

I experimented with both live yeast and sourdough yeast, but finally settled on Saf Moment dry yeast. Unlike live yeast that manages to stink even in the freezer, from the sourdough, which should always follow, otherwise it will over-ferment and turn into sourness, and its taste is felt in the bread (up to the beer, sorry, belching, which sounds like a retarded truck) - so, unlike them all dry yeast "Saf-moment" raise almost any dough.

Including non-pure wheat, i.e. mixed dough, and very muffinous dough - you just have to give "Saf-moment" a little more time.

When you bake bread from mixed flour - wheat and whole wheat, rye, buckwheat, corn, you should take into account: the more in the dough is not wheat but some other flour, the less gluten in it, aka gluten. But it is gluten that provides the rise of the dough. Only dry breads are made without it - the same ones eaten by people with celiac disease, a gluten intolerance.

If for some reason you don't put in half as you should, but less than a quarter of the wheat flour, you can add a little (a little! that is, no more than a teaspoon per half kilo of dry mix) artificial gluten in supplements. There is artificial gluten in powder, called panifarin. Without it, three-quarter non-wheat bread may not rise.

If you are baking very muffins (and muffins are known to prevent the yeast from working), then the easiest way is to use the opaque method: let the yeast rise in the liquid dough with a little muffin (a few spoons of sugar - they activate the yeast), and when the yeast rises the sourdough, add both muffins and the rest of the flour. Then the dough will also rise with more melange (eggs, butter, milk) and spices.

Bread is best kneaded by adding flour as needed. For a shaped loaf or a small loaf you need 300 grams of flour and 200 ml of water. I always take the liquid components in half the quantity of the dry ingredients, salt - a teaspoon without a hill per half kilo of dough, sugar - a teaspoon and a half, butter in the bread I put vegetable, a tablespoon per half kilo of dough.

If the dough as it is kneaded "pulls the tail" on the walls of the bowl, sticky to the hands - then the bread will be very porous. If the dough is kneaded into a firm ball, it will be a dense bread. This is the way you like it. You can add a few spoonfuls of water or flour as you knead. I have kneaded the bread on a kneading program with a bread maker and a planetary mixer - the mixer is easier. You can see for yourself when the loaf becomes elastic and homogeneous.

The easiest way to proof the bread is in the oven at 30-40 degrees. The yeast works best at this temperature, after an hour or two the dough doubles in size. Here you have to take it out, knead it, form a loaf or a loaf of bread. Spread the top with vegetable oil, but if you want to sprinkle the top of the bread or loaf with seeds, sesame, cumin or dried herbs - better grease with beaten egg, otherwise all this charm will crumble.

The bread should rise again before baking. Now you just have to walk around and watch when it doubles in size. And when it does, I just turn the oven from 30 degrees to 230. It's a young, good oven, heats up very quickly.

I bake bread in silicone rectangular forms - even very soft bread comes out of them without difficulty. Baking time is always different - 5 minutes more, then the same 5 minutes less. Ready bread browns and smells strong, it's hard not to understand that it signals: I'm baked! I'm baked!

After baking, grease the bread with vegetable or melted butter again to keep the crust from drying out - and wait for the loaf or loaf to cool. Hot bread, firstly, is bad for the stomach, and secondly, it is not cut, but crumpled into a sticky mass, it should be broken, not cut. But warm bread can be sliced when it has cooled. It can be smeared with butter and sprinkled with the same seeds and eaten.

Yes! And do not put bread that has not cooled down to a cold state in a bag, even in a paper bag. It can get damp and mildewy on the second day.

This is, in fact, all the "baker's secrets.

... "Give us this day our daily bread".

Do I throw away spoiled bread?

Definitely NO!!!!! I don't know what it is about religious people, but purely humanly it's a sin, of course.

Even if not just stale, but spoiled is for us spoiled children of affluence. And a stray dog or even a homeless person will be saved from starvation by this stale food and nothing will happen to them. Their stomachs are used to more than that.

If someone is so picky and considers it unacceptable to feed an animal or a poor person with stale food, let them bury and destroy it. But if they don't go afterwards and buy unexpired food and feed the hungry who have not been given stale food - not much good will come from such noble impulses.

In everyone's culture there is still the memory of the war years, when there was a lack of food. Every crumb was worth its weight in gold and it was hard to imagine that anyone could throw away bread. This attitude towards food is still present today.

Image sources: shutterstock.com ; depositphotos.com, freepng.ru, and also photographed by me.

I thank God for his help in writing this article, and you, dear readers, praise him if your reading has been helpful to you.

I want to know your opinion.

If you are interested in my content,then I invite you to read my other articles:

https://read.cash/@Belozoriana/onion-and-garlic-jam-f71c50ef

https://read.cash/@Belozoriana/forest-glade-themed-cake-b6adf80b

https://read.cash/@Belozoriana/we-eat-to-live-not-live-to-eat-5fc88f83

https://read.cash/@Belozoriana/choice-or-a-reaction

https://read.cash/@Belozoriana/gravlax-or-they-are-not-rolls-fb460b64