Discover Sourdough

The Full Story

The Beginning

Sourdough bread is arguably the oldest type of leavened bread ever made. Before sourdough most breads were dense flatbreads. At some point in history some enterprising individual realized that under specific, and not quite understood, conditions that lump of dough would rise, forming a light, airy, and chewier bread than the dense flatbreads that were made. The driving force behind this leavening was microbes, specifically wild yeasts and lactobacilus bacteria. As these microscopic entities were unknown until the advent of the microscope this process remained a mystery for millenia.

Once the microscopic world was better understood scientists began working on developing yeast strains that could leaven bread much quicker than the slow and laborious process that using wild microbes demanded. Bread could then be made quicker and with much less labor, this caused sourdough breads to be outpaced by the now ubiquitous yeast risen bread. While this mass produced bread is certain less expensive than sourdough, a lot has been lost, including both taste and health benifits.

Health

Sourdough has many health benifits over regular mass produced bread. Due to the long and slow fermentation process soughdough bread is easier to digest, promotes a healthy gut biome, and allows for better mineral and vitamin absorbtion than standard mass produces breads.

Taste

Sourdough bread simply has a more robust and complex taste than standard bread. The fermentation process creates a sourness than other breads simply don't have. This sourness can be barely perceptable (with a quicker fermentation) or more intense (with a longer, often overnight, fermentation). The longer fermentation of sourdough also give the microbes time to create chemical compounds that are not created in mass market bread. These compounds add a depth of taste that other breads simply cannot replicate.

The Sourdough Process

Unlike mass produced bread, baker's yeast is not added as a leavening agent. Sourdough is instead leavened by wild yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria that is naturally occuring in the environment. These microbes are all over, on the flour, in the air, and on the tools that the baker uses.

The baker creates what's called a sourdough starter which is nothing more than a mixture of flour and water. This mixture is put in a jar with a loose fitting lid and left to sit in a room tempurature environment. After about three days the mixture begins to rise and show bubbles. These bubbles are the result of the microbes eating the sugars in the flour and producing carbon dioxide which causes the mixture to increase in volume. At specific intervals the baker must remove a set amount of the starter and replaces it with a mixture of flour and water. This is needed as the microbes will eventually use up all of the sugars in the mixture and will need this replenished in order to keep reproducing.

When the baker is ready to make bread they take a specific amount of this starter and add it to a mix of flour and water and over time this rises, it is baked, and the result is sourdough bread. As these wild microbes metabalize much slower than baker's yeast sourdough must be allowed to ferment for a much longer period of time. Yeasted bread typically takes two hours where sourdough is usually allowed to ferment overnight. This is why sourdough is more expensive than yeasted bread, it is a much more time consuming and labor intensive process.