My neighbour Floare has baked bread every Saturday evening for 50 years, in the oven of her wood stove. Her recipe is “as much flour as it takes, water as needed, yeast the size of a pigeon’s egg”. I stood next to her with the kitchen scale and she let me, laughing at me.

Ingredients for a one-kilo loaf

• 600 g bread flour (Floare uses flour from the mill in Gilău; any bread flour works);
• 400 ml lukewarm water;
• 12 g fresh yeast (or 4 g dried);
• 12 g salt;
• a spoon of oil for the bowl.

How she does it, translated

1. Dissolve the yeast in 100 ml of the water with a pinch of flour and leave 10 minutes until it foams.
2. Mix the flour and salt with the starter and the rest of the water until no dry flour remains. Knead 10 minutes: the dough is sticky, as it should be, do not add flour.
3. Rise covered, somewhere warm, an hour and a half, until doubled. Floare puts it by the stove; in a flat, in the switched-off oven with the light on.
4. Turn out, fold three times like a letter, place in a greased round dish and rise another 45 minutes.
5. Oven at 240 °C with a tray of water at the bottom, 20 minutes; then 200 °C without water, another 25. Done when it sounds hollow when tapped.

The only secret

Do not cut it warm. Floare wraps it in a cloth and leaves it until morning. On Sunday, with coffee, the crust crackles and the crumb is moist. I tried cutting at 20 minutes: a different bread.