This is a photograph of an oven peel balanced between a chair and small table in the kitchen of Veronica, now deceased, of Labanors, Lithuania. Reeds have been placed on the peel which is awaiting a loaf of rye bread. The bread oven is to the right, in the kitchen wall. The fir broom used to mop out the oven before adding the bread is in the right-hand corner of the room.

Veronica, the woman who taught me how to make Lithuanian rye bread was born during the Second World War in the village of Labanoros. She died in 2001. Bread making in the old way, bread made from the grains her family grew and then baked in huge batches ended in the 1950’s. Collectivization took away the family’s fields, and subsidized commercial bread production took way the incentive to bake bread. Under the communist regime, bread was so cheap that her family bought it in the shop and fed it to the pigs. In fact, when I first met Veronica, one of her complaints about the post-communist period was how much more work there was now than before because one had to work much harder to feed the pigs.

While Veronica did not bake on a regular basis, she did, occasionally still bake bread. Her bread was made with 100% rye flour, water, and salt. The starter was mixed in a half-barrel, covered with a jacket, and set by the stove to rise. The tub was never entirely cleaned out, and so the yeast from one batch was transferred to the next. Veronica used the tub that you see in the photogragh to the left for forty years. This initial starter did not include salt and was wetter than the finished dough.
After the starter was actively fermenting, a matter of days, Veronica added fresh flour, formed the breads, lit the fire, and baked them off. Thus, the final bread was dense. It rose only for the time the oven was being fired — about two hours. Veronica’s breads were typically 4 to 5 kilos (9 to 11 pounds). The flavor improves for a couple days, and then holds steady for two to three weeks. Bread lasts longer during the cool season than during summer when it is more likely to mold.

Veronica mixed her bread by hand. Rye is particularly sticky dough, and when Veronica needed her hands to be clean, during the kneading process, she kept them wet by dipping them in a bowl of water. I have since adopted this method when kneading wet dough and find it is very effective.