The rise of sourdough
Sourdough is the bread of the moment – bakeries are making it, commercial brands are selling it, and it’s even appearing in pizza bases.
But is it all really all that? It could be, but many bakers say some consumers may not always be getting the best bite for their buck.
Traditionally, baking a loaf of sourdough requires time spent nurturing a starter, or bug made from flour and water. The starter acts as the leavening agent, similar to baking powder or yeast.
Once a baker has a bubbling starter, it’s ready to mix with flour, water and salt for a dough that bakes into a loaf with a distinctive flavour. There are many differing flours, methods and steps, but the common thread is the long fermentation process – between three and 12 hours, depending on weather and sourdough potency.
The price of a sourdough loaf starts around $5 due to the time it takes to bake each loaf, although the bread aisle in supermarkets has commerciallymade sourdough selling for as little as $3.50.
And some independent bakers are perplexed at what’s being labelled as sourdough.
One of the owners of Wellington’s Shelly Bay Baker, Simon Morton, says sourdough has been going for quite a while in New Zealand and some commercial brands have just ‘‘jumped on the bandwagon’’.
One industrial-made sourdough in the bread aisle lists at least 12 ingredients, the third and fourth being baker’s yeast and 3 per cent dried wheat sourdough.
‘‘There’s no actual difference apart from they’ve sprinkled in some dried sourdough powder, which has been cooked, so it’s actually inert. They’ve actually killed anything in that sourdough,’’ Morton says.
He believes that if a sourdough loaf doesn’t use a starter, it isn’t a true sourdough. The list of ingredients in some commercially-made sourdough suggests they are made with the Chorleywood process, he says, which uses highspeed whipping, making bread quickly while creating consistent crumb, using enzymes and emulsifiers. ‘‘Essentially you are not using a long, slow fermentation to deliver the goods, you’re using high-speed industrial mixers and chemicals to give you some nice bread.’’
Independent artisan baker Ron Kurze says the key to calling bread sourdough is the long fermentation process. The owner of The German Bakery in Waihi says bakers could use yeast ‘‘but I prefer if it was a minimum of 12 hours, soaked or fermented, before they are calling it sourdough’’.
He says real sourdough is still ‘‘soft and fluffy’’ a week later, but regular bread becomes hard within hours or days after opening. He understands though that for many families, income dictates the type of bread they can buy, and for others, it’s a choice of health versus convenience.
‘‘It’s not until [people] reach 40 or 45... they start to think about food, but before this, it was more important to have a nice car, whatever, instead of buying an $8 loaf of bread’’.
He says people are just trying to satisfy their hunger fast – ‘‘it’s not so important if it’s quality or not’’.
But he says there needs to be regulations for labelling sourdoughs and a number of products state ‘‘what it isn’t’’, including breads marketed as being pumpkin seed or quinoa when there is only 1 or 2 per cent in the product.
Sourdough is the oldest form of leavened bread and dates back to around 1500 BC when Egyptians discovered the bubbly leavening agent. From there, the bread without yeast found its way to Europe and the method travelled to San Francisco, California during the gold rush of the mid-1800s.
Ploughman’s Limited Edition Sourdough by George Weston Foods Ltd was the first commercially-produced sourdough available on New Zealand supermarket shelves and includes a dozen ingredients.
A Ploughmans spokesperson says the rising agent is baker’s yeast and an added ‘‘sourdough concentrate’’ gives the loaf ‘‘the traditional flavour you get from a sourdough in a convenient, mainstream, affordable format with a genuine sourdough taste’’.
They say the time it takes to make the bread from mixing to baking is ‘‘the magic in our baking process’’ but ‘‘cannot share our baking times that make our Ploughmans loaves so special’’.
Freya’s German Sourdough producer, Goodman Fielder, did not respond to questions regarding their sourdough processes.
Meanwhile, many supermarket in-store bakeries are producing sourdough with good results, including some Pak’ n Save stores and most Countdowns.
Countdown’s head of bakery Ryan McMullen says commercial yeast and dried sourdough mix are used to give it the distinct flavour, but all the sourdough bread products are made in-store and take 12 to 15 hours to make.
‘‘After the ingredients are mixed, the dough is left overnight allowing [it] to mature and ferment. The following day it’s brought back out of the chiller, allowed to come back up to room temperature and is then baked.’’
Sourdough bread may have a distinctive flavour and a lower glycemic index (GI) than most other breads, making you feel fuller for longer, but it is also significantly kinder on the gut.
Wellington’s Food Savvy registered dietician Sarah Elliott says she has worked extensively on digestive health, and traditional sourdough was proven to be beneficial to digestion, especially for people with a fodmap intolerance or irritable bowel syndrome. Fodmaps are the fermentable carbohydrates found in wheat.
Elliott says some people think they have gluten issues, but it could be the fodmaps they’re reacting to. ‘‘It’s fairly common.’’
In sourdough, the fermentation process is doing much of the work the gut would normally have to do on regular bread, she says. ‘‘The bugs you’re putting in the sourdough actually help to break down some of the components that make bread tricky to digest for some people. If you don’t have that overnight fermentation ... you’re not getting the same breakdown.’’
Elliott says that doesn’t mean industrially-made breads don’t have a place in our diet.
‘‘It just means that if you’re somebody who finds that you tolerate sourdoughs better and you’re not getting so bloated and uncomfortable, you’ll probably need something that has a longer fermentation time to get that benefit of the breakdown.’’
In 2019, before the sourdough craze hit home bakers during Covid, Pizza Hut New Zealand released their ‘‘hand-crafted San Francisco-style sourdough base’’ – and according to their social media presence, it’s the real deal.
A Pizza Hut post on Facebook responded to customer queries on its authenticity and says the crust is prepared from scratch in store using a sourdough culture, flour, water and vegetable oil. ‘‘Our sourdough is left to ferment for 16 hours after mixing, just like traditional sourdough bread.’’
Whatever form it takes, sourdough’s popularity is rising, along with copycats fast-tracking their way to faux sourdough. So maybe it’s time to try your local bakery’s sourdough if you haven’t already, and sample the genuine article.