Our journey into discovering sourdough has been an interesting one, and our decision to form a business around it involves more than
just baking and selling a delicious, crusty loaf of bread. For us, it's all about health.
I'll let Nate continue in his own words...
My
entre’ into bread baking started with a bread machine and a desire to make good
bread for my family. A little over 6 years ago, Kristen, and I were
just getting started with our adventures in sustainable farming. We wanted to
live more self-sufficiently and bread became one of those things I thought we
should make ourselves. I've had more than my fair share of failures along the way, but I always tried again, no
matter how discouraged I felt.
I
learned from a farmer friend that sourdough was the healthiest bread we could eat and was excited to find that our local grocery store baked it fresh daily. I didn't understand then that it wasn't real sourdough. Did you know that there are no actual cultures in most store-bought sourdough bread, and that they add ingredients like Fumaric Acid and Tartaric Acid to give the
bread that “sour” flavor?
A
few months later, another farmer friend gave me a sample of his sourdough
starter. I had heard that the whole process of making sourdough was slow and tedious
and that it can take days to properly ferment the dough. I wasn’t sure how I
would fit that into our already busy farming days, but I took it on as a challenge
and dove right in.
In
the beginning, I made all the usual mistakes. I even killed my starter a couple of
times (at least I thought I did) and eventually I learned how to
start a new culture by myself. By
re-starting my starter, I began to have a greater respect for the microbes that
grew in my flour and water mixture. After a while, that starter became like
another farm animal that I would instinctively feed and take care of. That’s
the thing about baking with a sourdough culture; it really is like having
another pet.
The
only ingredients I was using were flour, water, salt and maybe some seeds. It was amazing to me that such simple ingredients could make a loaf of
bread with such flavor. Why was it necessary for the grocery store bakery to
put all those ingredients into their so-called “sourdough?” It became clear to
me that like any industrialized food product, mass-production comes at the
expense of nutrition and integrity.
When
I started fermenting the dough for longer periods of time, I started to
notice that an annoying scalp/skin condition wasn’t nearly as bad as it had
been my entire life. I always understood that condition to be your everyday,
embarrassing case of dandruff and something that was just my lot in life. I had
never really put it together that perhaps it was something I was eating that
caused it.
I
began researching the science of sourdough and how it might be possible that a
certain type of bread could be the remedy for my lifelong skin issues. What I
learned about those microbes really excited me. Just like the kind of farming
we were interested in, sourdough was this beautiful symbiotic mix of life. It
was all so miraculous! All I had to do was (in the spirit of Joel Salatin) be
the choreographer for these microbes and allow them to express their
bacteria-ness or yeast-ness.
Indeed,
those sourdough cultures were making all the difference in the dough. Given
enough time and the right conditions to do their work, those microbes transform
the dough from something somewhat indigestible, high glycemic and even allergenic, to
something nutritious, easily assimilated and even healing. Suddenly, taking all
that time to make a loaf of sourdough was worth every minute, hour and day it
took. From then on, I could never bake another loaf of conventional baker’s
yeast bread again.
I bake sourdough bread because it’s really the only bread I can eat
without having a negative reaction. I have learned that instead of having a 'wheat sensitivity', I am sensitive to improperly prepared wheat. The
difference between commercial bread and properly fermented sourdough is like night and day for me, and for many others.
Here are five health benefits of
sourdough you may not know:
1. Sourdough cultures literally
“pre-digest” the constituents of gluten proteins found in wheat and convert them into amino acids
available for our body’s immediate use. The result is bread that can even be
tolerated by some (not all) people with a gluten intolerance. An Italian study
from 2010 entitled, “Safety for Patients
With Celiac Disease of Baked Goods Made of Wheat Flour Hydrolyzed During Food
Processing” found that subjects with celiac disease could eat sourdough
products without any of the usual digestive problems associated with
celiac sprue. While this was not a large study, it does show a lot of promise
for the reintroduction of wheat into the diets of some people who felt they had no choice but to be “gluten-free.”
2. Because of the lactic and acetic acid
production by the bacteria and wild yeast and their corresponding enzymes, sourdough
bread has a much longer shelf life than conventional bread that does not use
preservatives. These organic acids act as natural mold inhibitors.
3. Sourdough bread has B vitamins produced
by the wild yeast and lactobacillus. Even B12, normally associated with meat
and dairy products, is produced by the wild yeast.
4. Unlike conventional bread and
gluten-free bread, properly fermented sourdough is considered a low-glycemic
food. The enzymes created by the activity of wild yeast and lactobacillus
consume excess glucose in the flour as well as convert starches into complex
sugars and then to simple sugars for these microbes to feed on. This is
important for diabetics and for the majority of the world’s population who
suffer from “candida overgrowth” and other secondary candida issues such as dandruff, athlete’s foot, yeast infections, thrush, poor digestion and even
cancer. All of these issues can be linked to candida overgrowth in the gut and throughout the
body.
5. Phytic acid present in grains and
legumes is greatly reduced by fermenting dough with sourdough cultures.
Phytates are responsible for binding minerals like iron, copper, magnesium,
calcium, and phosphorous which can lead to deficiencies of these minerals.
Phytic acid can also chelate niacin which can lead to a condition called
pellagra. In sourdough, the phytates can be reduced by nearly two-thirds,
nearly twice as much as conventionally yeasted breads.
Baking sourdough bread has
become a passion for me, as well as being my own personal path to health. I'm really excited
to start a business that enables me to share all I know about it, as well as sharing some delicious bread.
A nifty mortar gun.
