Why is sourdough the best bread, as the original leaven bread?
Bread, either leavened or unleavened, can be traced to prehistoric times. The discovery of leavened bread could probably be due to an accident. Yeast spores mixed with the dough and produced fermentation. Until 19th Century, all leavened bread used to have a sour taste, not coming from the yeast, but from the lactic acid excreted by a lactobacillus that lives in symbiosis which the yeast. This lactic acid protected the bread from spoiling as most microorganism cannot survive in an acid environment. Today, the lactobacillus has been removed except for the “sour bread”. Nowadays, you have unleavened bread in Mediterranean Diet. An example is the “Feast of Unleavened Bread in Israel”, a millenarian tradition. Sourdough bread (original Mediterranean Diet leavened bread) is made without commercial yeast. It was the way that leavened bread was done for thousands and thousands of years before you could buy a packet of yeast. You have to make an “starter” , in which the wild yeast will grow wi
Sourdough Bread: Sourdough (or, more formally, natural leaven or levain) refers to the process of leavening bread by capturing wild yeasts in a dough or batter, as opposed to using a domestic, purpose-cultured yeast such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Sourdough more specifically refers to a symbiotic culture of lactobacilli and yeasts, giving a distinctively tangy or sour taste (hence its name), due mainly to the lactic acid and acetic acid produced by the lactobacilli; the actual medium, known as “starter” or levain, is essentially an ancestral form of pre-ferment. Sourdough is no longer the standard method for bread leavening in most developed countries, as it was gradually replaced, first by the use of barm from beermaking, then, after the confirmation of germ theory by Louis Pasteur, by cultured yeasts. However, some form of natural leaven is still used by many speciality bakeries. For further Ref. link below. Sources: h
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As the original leavened bread – all bread was “sourdough” until Louis Pasteur’s germ theory led to packaged yeast – sourdough has a long and storied past. But as a let-them-eat-cake epoch gives way to home pleasures and the local food movement, sourdough is equally suited to our own times. Classic, inexpensive and uniquely local, sourdough is as fascinating to kids and novices as it is to practiced bakers and mad scientists of all ages. Sources: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/upper-crust-why-sourdough-is-the-best-bread-1669235.
