Do you know how easy it is to bake your own bread?

I didn’t, and now I do. And I want to share this knowledge with you.

Want homemade sandwich bread? Just replace the water with milk or half and half and add melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar.

Once you know, it will be harder to go back to the chemical-infused grain product the big, industrialized food manufacturers tell us is “bread.”

Especially since the real thing — what everyone understood as “bread” for all of human history until about 100 years ago — is cheaper, more nutritious, and doesn’t taste like Styrofoam.

Sourdough … for the rest of us

And don’t worry — we’re not going to ruin the fun by approaching it like neurotic, fussy “homesteading” influencers obsessed with buying shiny new equipment to make old-fashioned techniques “authentic.”

You’re not going to need a kitchen scale or a digital probe thermometer. You’re going to make something delicious and wholesome just the way your great-grandmother did, and she didn’t use any of these modern techno crutches.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about sourdough. I didn’t want to use the word before clearing the conceptual brush, because it’s contaminated with “lifestyle” associations. People imagine a complex “artisan” process that can only be achieved by some irritating guy from Minneapolis who talks in upspeak on YouTube.

A few months ago I wrote about cooking from scratch, by hand, without relying on gadgetry and GPS-style “turn by turn” directions. In that piece, I said I was going to learn to bake bread from a natural sourdough starter all by hand, with no scales, no metric-graduated beakers, and no obsessive feeding schedule.

I’ve done it. And it turned out as I thought it would. My hands now know what the right dough consistency feels like. My eyes can tell if the loaf has risen for long enough that it can be baked. The only tools I have relied on were cup measures and a glance at the clock so I know about how long the dough has been fermenting (rising). I don’t need directions or scales or thermometers because I own the knowledge in my hands and mind through direct practice.

The duds? Only about two or three loaves. My problem? Using a starter that was too weak; I hadn’t let it fully develop in the beginning culture stage before I started baking with it. Once I sorted that out, I ended up with this hearty specimen:

Josh Slocum

You’re going to make a loaf that good, and you’ll have it down by memory in one month.

Then you’ll branch out into other kinds of bread. Want homemade sandwich bread? Just replace the water with milk or half and half and add melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar. That’s all I did. Here’s the result from my first try:

Then I wanted something fancier, something like the loaves I’ve been paying $9 for at a local bakery that does it the old-fashioned way with nothing but flour, water, culture, and salt. I just added olive oil and rosemary and put fancy salt on top:

Want to do it yourself?

As I mentioned, I’m not going to give you a recipe. At least, not in the modern-day sense of a set of precisely calibrated steps and measurements designed to produce the exact same outcome every time.

Instead I’m going to give you a basic outline that forces you to absorb the process physically and by instinct, rather than just memorizing turn-by-turn directions. If you’re not afraid of plunging your hands directly into the dough and making practice loaves until you get it right, you’ll be baking like this in a few weeks.

For the starter

You’re not going to buy a starter from any of those online marketplaces. You’re going to make your own. The yeast comes from the rye flour and from the air.

Ingredients

Stone-ground whole rye flour. Yes, whole, and yes, rye, even if you don’t plan to make rye loaves. Rye is packed with natural yeast and bacteria that make starters get off the ground quicker than white flour.WaterA jar

Method:

Take about a cup of whole rye flour and add enough room-temperature water to make a thick paste. And I do mean “paste” — something with the consistency of the stuff you remember using in school for papier-mâché volcanoes.

But don’t get neurotic. If it’s thinner or thicker than my paste, it’s still going to work.

Mix it well in the jar. Then take a rubber band and put it around the outside of the jar at the level where the starter is now. This is so you can see rise over time. Cover that jar loosely with a towel, cheesecloth, or a loose lid and put it in the oven with the light on. Leave it for 24 hours. Then discard half of it and add the same amount of rye flour and water back in, mix, and leave for another day.

You’re going to do this for at least seven days. After the first few days, you’ll see some bubbles. It’s not ready yet. Keep discarding and feeding. You may even notice it smells a little off the first few days. That’s normal.

By day seven (or a bit longer), you’ll notice that the starter smells sour, in a pleasant way, and yeasty. That’s what you want. At that point, you should also be seeing it double in size between feedings. If it’s not doing that, keep going with daily feedings.

Now you’ve got a stable starter. Stick it in the fridge. You can keep using rye to feed it for baking, or you can feed it white flour and convert it. I just use whatever flour I have handy because I don’t mind my loaves having mixed grains.

Your first loaf

So far we have used rye flour and water. Now to add our two final ingredients: white bread flour and salt.

Again, that’s white bread flour, not all-purpose. Bread flour has a higher protein ratio, which you need for building structure and rise.

First, take your starter out of the fridge and feed it flour and water. Put it in your oven with the light on. This gives it the perfect 80 degrees F temperature that it likes. Colder than that and it takes forever. Significantly hotter than that, and you may kill the yeast.

Wait for it to double in size, three to four hours.

Take it out and mix about a half-cup of starter into about a cup and a half of room-temperature water. Put the jar of starter back in the fridge. You only need to keep about a tablespoon of it — that will inoculate all the flour the next time you feed it for baking.

In a large bowl, put in about four and a half cups of bread flour and two teaspoons of salt. Mix the salt through the flour. Now add your wet mixture of water and starter. Stir or use your hands to mix until it all comes together and there are no more dry flour spots. It will be rough and shaggy.

RELATED: Cooking is easy; it’s our modern anxiety that makes it hard

The Print Collector/Getty Images

Knead? No need

Guess what? You’re not going to knead. The reason most people knead is because we have used commercial yeast since it became available in the 1860s. Commercial yeast rises in just hours, too short a time for the yeast to build the bread structure, so you have to do it by hand to develop the gluten.

Not so with sourdough, using this method. Time is going to do everything kneading does and more.

Cover the dough and put it in a cold room or cellar if you have one. Somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees F. Let it sit 18-24 hours.

This is cold fermentation, which gives you the tang of sourdough, and it makes the bread more nutritious and long-lasting before it goes stale. If you don’t have a cold room, let your dough ferment for a few hours on the counter, then put it in the refrigerator overnight.

At the end of fermentation, you are ready to bake. Preheat a Dutch oven in your oven at 450 degrees for 45 minutes. Shape your dough into a ball or loaf, and put it in the Dutch oven. Cover, put back in the oven, and bake for 30 minutes, still at 450.

Remove the lid, turn the oven down to 400, then bake for about 10 to 15 more minutes to get a golden crust.

You have made bread that is miles above the plastic grotesquerie sold at grocery stores, for almost no money and for very little effort. No scales; no precise measuring. This is how your ancestors and all humans made bread for thousands of years before the late 19th century.

If your first few loaves aren’t great, keep going.

Don’t forget to slather it in butter.

​Baking technique, Bread baking, Homemade bread, Sourdough starter, Homemade sandwich bread, Lifestyle, Cooking, Baking, Nutrition, Intervention 

Rapper and singer Azealia Banks went on a rant against gay liberals and thanked God for the Republican Party.

Banks posted the rant Sunday on her official X account, where it got a lot of attention.

‘I don’t care how many f**king dead gazan kids you try guilt tripping me with…. Liberalism is f**king dead.’

“I honestly really much prefer a Republican Government. It’s f**king refreshing to exist as a woman in America without gay men’s retarded and completely irrelevant voices and opinions on anything at all being a factor. Literally thank God for the GOP,” she began.

She appeared to voice opposition to transgender-identifying people.

“Gay men don’t do s**t but bamboozle women out of their place in society so they can siphon $ away from womens health to fund sex changes for themselves and convince you that your [sic] mentally ill for saying anything about it. F**k that. Defund the faggots,” she added.

She went on to claim that she had been called a b***h and a bigot by gays.

“We are simply not bringing the dnc back. I don’t care how many f**king dead gazan kids you try guilt tripping me with…. Liberalism is f**king dead,” Banks continued.

Banks previously said on social media that no one was born gay or identifying as transgender, but that both were a result of mental illness stemming from trauma.

“I don’t care HOW MANY fat black bitches, ashy black faggots or off brand african immigrants you try polluting black america’s image with,” she concluded. “LIBERALISM IS OVER.”

Banks is known for her outspoken, expletive-ridden rants.

RELATED: Azealia Banks melts down over RFK Jr. proposal to restrict ‘junk food’ from food stamp program

In 2025, she lambasted HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for suggesting that junk food should be restricted from federally funded food aid programs.

In 2015, she said she hated “fat white Americans” and everything about the U.S.

“All the people who are crunched into the middle of America, the real fat and meat of America, are these racist conservative white people who live on their farms,” the rapper said.

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​Azealia banks, Transgender-identifying movement, Celebs on trans debate, Politics, Celebrities vs democrats 

The “Squad” is about to pick up a new member with Analilia Mejia, and it’s because the media won’t stop lying. Some politicians rise by appealing to voters’ sympathetic nature, making lofty promises of an easier life with less struggle. In doing so, they deliberately ignore the root causes of society’s problems and discredit any fixes that would diminish their own power.

The modern-day Democratic Party embraced radical ideologies and extreme rhetoric that will ultimately harm the American people, all while disguising those policies as compassion. Just look at media darlings like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.

Politicians who thrive on deception need gatekeepers to keep inconvenient truths from the public.

What’s worse, their deception is amplified by the mainstream media. Information is presented in such a biased way that the ill-informed voter is left believing that if they don’t vote the “correct” way, the United States will no longer exist.

This pattern is now so prevalent that political candidates who would never have been considered a legitimate threat 10 to 20 years ago are beginning to fill important political seats. These deceptions have helped far-left candidates like New Jersey Democrat Analilia Mejia rise to power.

Here are three key deceptions Mejia has exploited.

Iran, taqiya, and the pro-Palestine blind spot

Nowhere is the media’s selective blindness more dangerous than in its coverage of Iran. The regime is an Islamic theocracy that has never hidden its ambitions. It has pursued nuclear capability, funded terrorist proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and embraced an ideology openly hostile to both Israel and the United States.

For years, Iran’s rulers have negotiated in bad faith while enriching uranium, arming proxies, and extending their influence across the region. Under those conditions, military options were no longer theoretical. Strikes on nuclear sites, missile infrastructure, and naval assets became necessary to prevent a far greater disaster.

Yet the same media that downplays Iran’s “Death to America” chants and its direct funding of Hamas portrays the conflict as Israeli overreach or American aggression. Mejia, a vocal pro-Palestine activist who has worn the keffiyeh and accused Israel of genocide, has built her platform on this distorted framing.

She either ignores or downplays the fact that Hamas is an Iranian proxy whose actions serve Tehran’s larger campaign against both Israel and the West. When politicians demand a ceasefire on terms that leave Iran and its proxies room to regroup, they do not move the region closer to peace. They shield the aggressor while pretending to restrain the war. The press helps them do it by burying Iran’s long record of deceit, terror sponsorship, and open threats beneath soft phrases like “regional tensions.”

Fraud, voter ID, and the ‘rights’ that protect the scam

The media’s coverage of election integrity and government fraud follows the same dishonest script. When Republican-led investigations and the work of independent journalists exposed massive Medicare and Medicaid scams in deep-blue states (hospice fraud in California potentially costing billions and Minnesota providers suspended after hundreds of millions in questionable claims), the story barely registered.

These schemes only came to light under renewed scrutiny from the current administration; Democratic states had little incentive to police their own. Yet the same outlets that yawn at taxpayer rip-offs scream that Republicans’ push for voter ID and stricter verification are “voter suppression.”

New Jersey provides fresh proof that fraud is real and corrosive. In January 2026, two Bergen County non-citizens were federally indicted for illegally voting in a U.S. election and lying on citizenship applications. In August of 2024, an ex-Plainfield mayoral candidate was charged with attempting to submit nearly 1,00 fraudulent voter registrations.

In 2025, county officials reported that homeless residents in Atlantic County were being solicited for fake messenger ballots. In 2024, James Devine pled guilty to submitting nearly 2,000 fake signatures on nominating petitions for the 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial primary. In 2022, Frederick Gattuso was convicted of tampering with public records when he voted twice using the registration of two people with similar names. These are not isolated “myths”; these are documented crimes that erode trust in the integrity of the electoral process.

Censorship and the Elon Musk exception

Mejia’s victory speech singled out Elon Musk as one of the “true radicals” subverting democracy. That line revealed a great deal. It showed exactly where she stands on speech, dissent, and who gets to control the public square.

During COVID, Democrats and allied Big Tech openly coordinated to suppress dissenting voices. The Hunter Biden laptop story was buried as “Russian disinformation” by 51 former intelligence officials, the lab leak theory was censored as a conspiracy, the Great Barrington Declaration on lockdowns was throttled, and vaccine skeptics were deplatformed. Government pressure on social media, revealed in the Twitter files, showed a clear pattern of state-backed censorship of conservative viewpoints.

Enter Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter (now X) precisely to restore free speech and end that collusion. Under his leadership, X became the only major platform where all sides could be heard. The media was complicit in the original censorship and now portrays Musk’s commitment to open discourse as dangerous “chaos.” Mejia’s anti-Musk stance is no surprise; politicians who thrive on deception need gatekeepers to keep inconvenient truths from the public.

Voters must see through the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Politicians like Analilia Mejia promise an easier life, compassion for the marginalized, and protection from “extremists,” all while leaning on a media echo chamber that distorts threats, buries successes, and censors dissent. They ignore root causes — Islamic terrorism sponsored by Iran, rampant fraud that wastes taxpayers’ dollars, politicized institutions that target reformers, and the slow erosion of open debate — because confronting those realities would shrink their power.

The result is not progress; it is a more divided, less secure, and less truthful America. New Jersey’s newest congresswoman and her ideological allies offer lofty rhetoric wrapped in deception. Americans who value security, prosperity, and liberty must reject the easy promises and demand the harder truths. The future of the Republic depends on it.

​Democratic party radical, Government fraud medicare, Mainstream media bias, Media deception politicians, Squad member analilia mejia, Opinion & analysis 

A “monster drought” is currently affecting more than 61% of the lower 48 U.S. states — the highest level for this time of year since 2000 — with nearly all of the Southeast and two-thirds of the West parched. Concerns over wildfires, water supplies, food prices, and even shortages are mounting quickly.

Glenn Beck pulls no punches about the severity of this drought: “The South is baked. Sugar cane, rice, peanuts, fruit trees [are] choking under severe, extreme, and even exceptional drought. Out in the plains (that’s our bread basket), winter wheat is sitting in dust; it can’t germinate because it doesn’t have the water. In the West, the mountain snow pack is vanishing before our eyes.”

Our farmers, he warns, are “barely hanging on,” and that burden will soon impact us.

“Food costs are going up and not a little — a lot. Beef, grains, produce, everything that comes from the fields all across our fruited plain. It’s going to cost more at the grocery store, and it’s coming sooner and faster than most people want to even admit,” says Glenn.

He urges his audience to start by fasting and praying.

“I’m asking you to fast and pray for rain all across the country. I’m asking you to fast and pray for our farmers because our farmers are under extreme stress. … They are probably the most important cog in the chain of this machinery,” he says.

The second thing Glenn implores his audience to do is “stop depending on this system.”

“It is really important that you become as food independent as possible. If you don’t have food storage, you should. If you have a scrap of yard, plant a garden this spring — tomatoes, beans, potatoes, greens, anything you can grow. Anything,” he pleads.

Whether it’s starting a “neighborhood garden,” learning how to “preserve” different foods, or “[stocking] a little extra when you can,” the time to prepare is now.

“This isn’t just about rain or fertilizer prices, market prices. … We are in a spiritual war, and I’m telling you, the very gates of hell will come against us in the days ahead,” Glenn warns.

Our current state of disunity, he cautions, will only make matters worse.

Glenn begs his audience to seek unity: “This too shall pass, but it will pass a whole lot easier if we stop pulling in different directions and start sticking together; if we stop hating one another and start helping one another; if we start to get to know our neighbors and say, ‘Look, I don’t care how you vote, man, but have you seen the price of food?”’

“Plant your seeds in the ground, and plant seeds of love in your heart and in your faith, and get ready because the storm is here.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Drought, Food crisis, Food prices, Food shortage, Glenn beck, Preparation, Shortages, Spiritual war, The glenn beck program, Water supplies, Wildfires, Food storage, Blazetv, Blaze media, Farmers 

The Trump administration has made it clear since its pullout from Minneapolis that the era of mass deportation is over and the administration will instead focus on criminal aliens. But sanctuary cities, which defend the worst of the criminal aliens, remain fully funded and undeterred well into Trump’s second term, with zero strategy to harness the news of endless heinous crimes committed in these fugitive jurisdictions.

How can it be that Republicans are planning one last party-line bill to fund ICE and aren’t even broaching the issue of sanctuary cities?

Just 15 months into this administration, the central campaign promise is dead.

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, there were over 300 sanctuary jurisdictions in 2016. In response to Trump’s rise to power and his threat to enforce our sovereignty, this number rose to 564 by 2018 — an increase of roughly 88% in the first two years of the Trump administration. As of last year, FAIR identified at least 1,003 by May 2025.

After failing to ignore the courts and cut off funding executively for over five years of Trump’s two administrations, the upcoming budget reconciliation bill is the last opportunity to accomplish this legislatively without Democrat support. Why is this not the single biggest focus of budget reconciliation?

You will not find a more lopsided political issue than shutting down local policies that harbor dangerous criminals who invaded our country to begin with. We already know that Republicans have pulled the plug on mass deportations and have no plans to defund or strip sanctuary judges of jurisdiction or pass even minor cuts to legal immigration. Defunding sanctuary cities should be the bare minimum to achieve some of the election promises, yet as of now, they only plan to pass a simple $70 billion ICE funding bill with no policy provisions attached.

To allow Democrats to shut down Department of Homeland Security appropriations and then go through the effort of passing a party-line reconciliation bill just to restore baseline ICE funding would represent the greatest failure of this trifecta on Trump’s signature promise of dating back to 2016.

Republicans seem incapable of making the cultural case against mass migration. But what is so hard about beating Democrats over the head every day with stories of heinous crimes committed by criminal aliens harbored by blue jurisdictions? Sadly, there is an unlimited supply of political ammo to use to force legislation that would finally end this subversion of American sovereignty.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Fairfax County, Virginia. Three out of the four murderers caught in Fairfax this year have been illegal aliens who should have been removed.

Abdul Jalloh, an illegal alien from Sierra Leone, allegedly stabbed Stephanie Minter at a bus stop. It turned out this was completely avoidable. Jalloh had 30+ prior arrests, including rape, assault, and weapons violations, yet prosecutor Steve Descano’s office dropped multiple felony charges against him despite three written warnings from police that he was dangerous. The sheriff ignored ICE detainers and released him repeatedly.Anibal Chavarria Muy, an illegal alien from Guatemala, allegedly hacked a man to death with a machete on March 29. This was 100% avoidable because he had already been arrested on assault and firearms charges, but Descano declined prosecution and the sheriff’s office ignored an ICE detainer.Misael Lopez Gomez, an illegal alien from Guatemala, was charged with beating his own baby to death on Mar 27, 2026. Just three weeks prior, he was arrested for driving without a license. Local officials clearly knew he was here illegally but released him to commit more crimes.

Overall, nine illegal immigrants have been linked to 12 murders in Fairfax County since 2019. Of course, sanctuary policies have been responsible for other heinous crimes as well. Israel Flores Ortiz, an illegal alien from El Salvador, was charged last month with groping 13 girls over six days at Fairfax High School. Descano, of course, undercharged him with simple assault and then tried to release him on bail. ICE has this man on its radar, but Fairfax officials would easily release him without informing ICE if they could get away with it.

RELATED: A birthright citizenship fix is more important than the SAVE Act

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Next door in Arlington, Virginia, Luzvin Garcia Moran allegedly nearly succeeded in abducting and raping a woman before he was arrested. It turns out he had prior drug, assault, and probation violations, yet Soros district attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti freed him each time.

The rationale for mass deportations has never before been buttressed by this many dangerous aliens, given the number of people waved in by the Biden administration. In the tragic irony of all ironies, just last Monday — amid the DHS funding lapse — Lauren Bullis, a DHS employee, was brutally shot and stabbed, allegedly by Olaolukitan Adon Abel in DeKalb County, Georgia.

Who is Adon Abel? Despite having prior convictions for sexual battery, battery against a police officer, obstruction, assault with a deadly weapon, and vandalism as an immigrant, the Biden administration’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted him full citizenship in 2022. This was, of course, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1427, which requires applicants to demonstrate “good moral character.”

How many Americans will even hear of Lauren Bullis? Republicans are incapable of publicizing all these heinous crimes facilitated by sanctuary cities to force a defund fight in middle of a DHS funding lapse, including when a DHS employee is murdered by one such recipient of Biden amnesty!

Appallingly, rather than building the case for defunding sanctuary cities and prohibiting driver’s licenses for illegal aliens in budget reconciliation, Trump and Republicans are using their waning political capital to pass an extension of FISA Section 702, the very program used to spy upon the Trump campaign.

Ironically, the Trump administration has already capitulated to Antifa by pulling the National Guard out of sanctuary cities and retreating from Minneapolis. According to new data published by ICE, the number of detainees plummeted by 12% since its peak in January. Just 15 months into this administration, the central campaign promise is dead.

The entire rationale for this capitulation is that Republicans would rather focus on criminal aliens. Well, in that case, why have they not publicized the endless list of heinous crimes committed in sanctuary jurisdictions to defund those insurrectionist cities, in the last party-line bill designed to fund the DHS?

​Opinion & analysis 

Another member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet is stepping down after a turbulent 13-month term at the Department of Labor.

The White House praised Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s time as labor secretary in a statement Monday announcing that she would be leaving the administration to join private industry.

‘While my time serving in the Administration comes to a conclusion, it doesn’t mean I will stop fighting for American workers.’

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector,” White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung said on social media. “She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”

Cheung said Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling would become acting director of the agency.

Chavez-DeRemer had been known as a pro-union Republican before she joined the Trump administration and would not have been confirmed without the help of three Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The 58-year-old’s husband was reportedly banned from the Labor Dept. offices over sexual harassment allegations, but a criminal investigation related to those claims was closed.

In March, two of her aides were forced out of the department over allegations of misconduct that included drinking on the job and inappropriate vacation trips.

Chavez-DeRemer issued a statement on social media as well.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to serve in this historic Administration and work for the greatest President of my lifetime,” she wrote.

RELATED: Trump’s Teamsters-backed labor pick pivots on pro-union position

“At the Department of Labor, I am proud that we made significant progress in advancing President Trump’s mission to bridge the gap between business and labor and always put the American worker first,” she added.

“While my time serving in the Administration comes to a conclusion, it doesn’t mean I will stop fighting for American workers. I am looking forward to what the future has in store as I depart for the private sector,” she concluded.

Trump’s cabinet has seen two other departures in the last few weeks: Kristi Noem as head of Homeland Security and Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general.

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​Lori chavez-deremer, Labor sec resigns, Accusations against chavez-deremer, Trump cabinet member resigns, Politics