so The story sourdough

This is bread with a history that stretches back thousands of years, that had fallen out of favour before making a well-deserved comeback

It may be the bread that everyone is making at the moment but sourdough is one of the oldest known methods of bread leavening.

The first dough ever made would have been a simple mixture of flour and water, baked until crisp like a flatbread. At some point people discovered that, when left untouched, uncooked dough would naturally rise and form bubbles. Once baked, the resulting bread rose and had a much lighter crumb than flatbread.

It also had a more sour flavour than other breads, caused by naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria, called lactobacilli, feeding on the carbohydrates in the flour, and creating lactic acid. This process also created a bread that kept for longer and travelled further, while remaining a tradeable commodity. And so sourdough became the original leavened bread, and got its name from its distinct flavour.

The sourdough process reduced in popularity during the Middle Ages, particularly in Germany and Britain, where they started to use the ‘barm’ leavening technique – a by-product of the beermaking industry. This stood until commercial yeast was invented, which meant that bread could be made and fermented quicker, and could be lighter and softer than ever before. However, what was gained in speed was lost in flavour.

At around the same time, the gold prospectors of the American west started making their own sourdough. San Francisco now prides itself as the modern home of sourdough, with its American football team mascot being named Sourdough Sam. In Alaska, a sourdough is a nickname for someone who spent the winter north of the Arctic Circle – to ensure their dough starter survived the cold weather, they would carry it around in a pouch strapped to their body and snuggle up to it at night.

Sourdough is made up of just three ingredients: water, flour and salt. It’s slow food, which means flavour is built in layers gradually over time. The lactic acid helps it keep for longer and gives it a more complex and refined flavour. Fermentation and lactic acid also break down more of the complex carbohydrates present in the bread, so it’s much easier for your body to break down than bread made using commercial yeast. The acids present also ensure that the minerals and nutrients in the bread are more readily available to your body, and they slow down the rate at which glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream.

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