Baking bread, I can almost smell it!

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.

M.F.K. Fisher

A lovely friend of mine in SL is a very keen baker, she’s a bit of a kindred spirit but I think a little more adventurous than me in the kitchen, a couple of weeks ago she told me she’d made her own starter to make Sourdough bakes and it got me thinking about sourdough, I knew it didn’t use yeast for the rise so I did some reading!

What’s sourdough and who invented it!?

No one knows who made the world’s first raised bread. But it’s likely to have happened after humans invented agriculture. Settling in one place, experimenting with mixtures of grain, someone probably noticed a mixture of crushed grains and water forming bubbles after a few days – the tell-tale sign of fermentation.

Fermentation occurs when microbes (like bacteria and yeast) digest substances, producing gas and other products. Milled flour naturally contains strains of Lactobacillus bacteria and wild yeast from the environment, and these microbes can digest starches and sugars in the flour. Ancient civilisations would have found out that this frothy mixture, when baked, produces a softer and fluffier alternative to early flatbreads. This began the trend of ‘leavening’ bread, making bread rise by incorporating substances (like microbes) to put gas bubbles in the mixture.

Lactobacillus and yeast don’t just change the texture of bread, they change its chemistry. Raw sourdough is a living thing, a changing blend of microbes, and it’s the natural balance between the yeast and bacteria which makes sourdough so special.

As the microbes grow and live and ferment, the Lactobacillus produce lactic acid and the yeast produce alcohol, giving the bread a tangy and acidic flavour. The acid in the dough also keeps out other types of fungus and bacteria, so the eventual bread has a longer shelf life. The microbes also digest gluten, meaning that real sourdough should either be low in gluten or gluten-free so, people with gluten-intolerance and celiac disease may be able to eat sourdough. The lower amount of sugars in sourdough means it also has a lower glycaemic index than many types of other bread so again with caution, it may be more suitable for diabetics!

In the past, bakers found they could save some leavened sourdough to add to new mixtures, which would convert them into more sourdough. With careful feeding of flour and water, these so-called ‘starter doughs’ can be kept alive indefinitely. In fact, there are starter doughs in modern bakeries that may be hundreds of years old!

Across the world, jars of starter doughs have been treated like family heirlooms, passed down through generations. In the US, starter doughs were carried by frontier settlers and Gold Rush prospectors, snuggled at night to keep them warm and alive.

Each starter dough really is unique, a potted history of local flour and microbes from the environment – including the Lactobacillus found naturally on the baker’s hands.

Traditional sourdough continues to be made and sold today in bakeries and artisanal markets. There’s even a sourdough library in Belgium which aims to collect and catalogue starter doughs from around the world. In Sweden, a sourdough hotel will maintain your starter for you while you vacation! You could make your own starter using just flour, salt and water, or purchase a regional starter dough over the interwebs. And you might decide the starter’s history doesn’t really matter – scientists have found the same distinct strains of Lactobacillus in San Francisco starter doughs as in bakeries across Europe.

But while some bakers are fiercely proud of their traditional sourdough and treasured starter doughs, there is no legal definition of sourdough. It’s really the Lactobacillus which is key to creating sourdough, yet there is no official legislation stating a sourdough loaf has to contain any Lactobacillus.8

Though 30–50 % of European breads are produced using sourdough, industrially-produced sourdough uses dried starters rather than a spoon of sticky dough from a treasured pot. Other “sourdough mimics” are likely leavened using yeast, and artificially soured with additives, indeed sourdough mimics may not even have the type or microbes needed to break down the gluten in grains. Which means, if you are gluten-intolerant or avoiding high GI-foods, there is even more reason to care whether your sourdough is authentic or not.

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