What makes it special a 100% sourdough bread
A memory of Bread BC
Bread. Most of us had our first piece of bread before we were able to talk or walk. A combination of smell and taste that create such a strong imprint to the human brain. Memories that sooner or later come to haunt us or patiently await a chance meeting, just like two strangers who feel they have met before. Sourdough bread can be an exciting addition to one’s diet, or a memory of the past that we choose to incorporate back into our diet. Here at Bread BC, we belong to the second category.
Reviving memories of a piece of sourdough bread in our mouth; a grandmother baking the family bread for the week. The intoxicating smell of bread baked in a traditional wood oven, luring the neighbourhood kids in a small village, knowing that a piece of left over dough in the form of a warm Propyra (local Sparta region type of fast baked bread) is awaiting them. These are the memories that we like to revive and introduce to your life and diet with the sourdough bread produced at Bread B.C.
Sourdough is an ecosystem of microorganisms that for thousands of years provides high value nutritional sustenance to humans. Today, Science helps us understand the complexity behind what is not visible to the naked eye, how millions of microbes transform a simple mixture of water, flour, and salt to sourdough bread.
The process is called fermentation. The word “ferment” comes from the Latin verb “fervere,” which means “to boil.” Ironically, fermentation is possible without heat and when we introduce heat to sourdough, we transform the dough to bread as the final product.
Based on the end products of the process there are three types of fermentation:
Lactic acid fermentation producing sourdough bread, yogurt, and pickles.
Ethanol/alcohol fermentation producing wine and beer.
Acetic acid fermentation producing vinegar and apple cider.
Fermentation is the process by which the microbes generate the energy they need to survive. They work together in a symbiotic environment producing complex enzymes like amylase, maltase, invertase, and zymase that are the catalysts of complex chemical reactions. Microbes and their enzymes are like workers with tools in an environment with multiple interdependencies where we see polysaccharides, complex starches and maltose of flour digested to simple sugars like glucose, sucrose into glucose, fructose, CO2, ethanol, esters, and lactic acids.
The fermentation process can be called pre-digestion as the microbes feed on sugars and starches, producing nutrients that are easier for humans to digest. The lactic acids produced create an environment that protects microbes from other microorganisms. It is the same acids that in the right balance make food more nutritious and preserving so people can store it for longer periods of time without it spoiling (a true sign of a long fermentation period). While the released CO2 is what gives sourdough its intense honeycombing while esters add additional flavour.
This is the chemistry of life behind our sourdough bread, a biochemistry that is linked to our taste, smell, memories, and nutrients and more importantly to our health. Food intake is critical for our survival and is an action by which we introduce to our body substances that our digestive system needs to process and tolerate.
Sourdough is a living organism, an ecosystem that one must master, feed, grow and balance in order to continuously produce the desired results. The different types of flours, microbes, techniques, and the duration of fermentation, to name a few play a critical role in the makeup of sourdough characteristics.
Each baker cultivates and nurtures multiple colonies of symbiotic microbes in a pot of water and flour, this is called a starter. The type of yeast and lactic acid bacteria in a starter contribute to a transformation that results in the unique taste, nutritional value, and digestibility of sourdough bread.
Multiple factors impact he digestibility and tolerance of flour products by the human digestive system. Our genetic makeup and relatively fast digestive track are challenged to process all ingredients found in bread. Wheat, gluten, proline, glutamine, gliadin, albumin, glutenin, fibre, polyols and phytic acid to mention a few are connected with coeliac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, auto-immune diseases and symptoms of abdominal pain, diarrhoea, and constipation.
The pre-digestion and modification of the above substances to nutrients friendly to our digestive track are directly proportional to the duration of the fermentation process. Sourdough is not gluten free; studies report that a 48-hour fermentation of sourdough can reduce the content of gluten to 12 parts per million (ppm), with 20 ppm being the limit by FDA to identify a product as gluten free. Slow fermentation, and the variability of microbes in starters is so powerful that a 48-hour fermentation can completely break down albumins, gliadins, and globulins in sourdough.
A slow fermentation cycle of over 20 hours is a transformation process that we need to respect in order to maximize its value, even though it limits our capacity to produce large amounts of bread daily.
We see and feel the benefits of slow fermentation in the flavour, nutritional value as well as our health, and this is what we offer our customers with the bread that is produced at Bread B.C.