Baked sourdough bread gets more sour with time (2024)

will give more flavour and a wetter starter will give a more mellow flavour. Have you considered keeping your starter at 100% hydration or higher?

Just had a look at the recipe. Looks good and the pre-ferment is already quite high. Just thinking how it may be tweaked a bit here and there to make it more mellow.

Bring the salt down to 22 grams. 1.5% - 2% is a good range. I know 2.3% is not that much of a difference but hey try it and see.

I don't think you can change the fermenting that much. 3 hours isn't that great a time in the first place.

You can try to speed up the final proofing by placing in a warmer area. That'll help a bit.

Otherwise, perhaps a tablespoon of honey into the dough mixture?

I made a bit of a boo-boo and I think a more firm starter will produce a less sour sourdough and a more liquid starter will produce a more sour sourdough. You did good and got the results you wanted because its not only the starter itself but how you use it and using more will result in less fermentation time and therefore less sour. So you were right on both counts. You used more of a firm starter and got a bread you like. Sourdough is the process but doesn't have to be sour. What is your recipe again!? I'm always looking for ideas to try myself and perhaps I can experiment too. Adding some toasted sunflower seeds by dry roasting them in a pan produces a wonderful addition to a bread.

May 26 2015 - 12:20pm

Worthy sentiments, however I think there is a counter-point to be made when you say:

"Bread has historically been a staple food for making empires but it's that bread and our bread is nowhere near the same thing."

The truth is that our modern 'empires' are also nowhere near the same thing - neither in lifestlye nor, most startlingly, in sheer population size and density.

Population size may be a quantitative measure but really large numbers just aren't the same as smaller numbers - they change things qualitatively as well. At some point, things just don't scale - you have to change how you operate, not just the size of the operation.

The simple truth - comfortable or otherwise - is that modern agricultural methods and food manufacturing processes are, collectively, probably the greatest saver of lives in human history. There are arguments to be made that perhaps this greater availability of food has driven (and continues to drive) over-population and perpetuates the problem but the fact remains: people exist and require food to stay alive.

Take Iran for example - the Persian empire was, historically, one of the largest in the world, by percentage of the population covered. Such metrics are never exact but, as a guide, the estimate is that it ruled over ~45% of the world population at the time. That was some time ago, of course, and the world population was only ~120m people, giving the empire around 54m people over an area of some 5.5 million square kilometres at its peak.

Compare that to modern day Iran, which has a population of around 83 million in an area less than a third the size. That's a population density FIVE TIMES that of the Persian empire.

I am using this as an example because Iran eats a lot of bread - 75% more (per person) that the US.

Or look at Turkey, which has a population density TEN TIMES greater than the Ottoman empire at its most populous.

Again, Turkey is a good choice as it exceeds even Iran in bread consumpution, with each person eating, on average, 150% more bread than those in the US, and with bread making up more that half of all calories consumed in the entire country.

As with Iran, this number will of course increase for poorer sectors and it would not be ridiculous to posit that bread might make up three quarters or more of the daily energy intake of the least advantaged and most vulnerable sections of those populations.

There are a lot of problems in both Iran and Turkey that are related to bread and wheat - subsidies, inefficiencies, political corruption and so forth - but the facts still remain: bread is essential to life in those countries and it is not an exaggeration to say that millions would die if bread was not cheaply and readily available. Egypt is similar.

You also say that:

"Bread-making has come a long way from its original roots."

True, but the 'original roots' of bread making are generally agreed to be the so-called 'fertile cresecent' and those earliet breads would have been unleavened and, regardless of grain variety or milling, would have had none of the benefits that are today imparted by even high-volume commercial sourdough methods. But, of course, bread making methods progressed from there and took on more of the characteristics I believe you are talking about, but you did use not just the term 'roots' but original roots : )

One thing that does interest me - mostly because I can't find any scientific literature dealing with the subject - is how sourdough bread may or may not differ in its thermic effect. My thought process is that, as food takes energy to digest, the more easily-digestible a food is, the less energy our bodies must expend in doing so. Thus - or so that line of reasoning might suggest - the more easily-digestible nature of sourdough (and specifically the proteins, having been 'snipped' into smaller subunits by increased protease activity,) might end up decreasing the thermic effect and thus lead - all esle being equal - the a higher net calorie intake for sourdough vs 'regular' bread.

I have also never seen a study (which is not to say one doesn't exist - I'd love to read one!) that compares sourdough and commercially-yeasted bread of comparable fermentation times. Studies instead compare sourdough at either standard (~8h) or long (~24hr) fermentation regular quick bread production - i.e. 1-2hr fermentation. Needless to say that this is not like-for-like and comparing a loaf of quick-process, additive assisted bread to a slow-fermented, 'flour, water and salt only' sourdough is hardly fair.

Sure, most commercial bread is quick but what of the comparison with a yeast bread that is fermented over 24 hours?

Not that any of the above is a challenge to anyone's views - I am genuinely interested in such things and would love to see some studies, if they exist.

d.

The following is exactly the type of un-balanced, apples-to-oranges write up that incites my ire - as an example of what I was talking about in my previous diatribe. It is taken from the page:

https://truesourdough.com/is-sourdough-bread-good-for-you-7-things-you-need-to-know/

"Did you know that an average slice of whole grain sourdough bread can have a Glycemic Index of less than 49? Just to put this into perspective, anything lower than 50 is considered LOW GI, and white commercial bread has a GI of around 72 (which is considered HIGH GI).

"Real sourdough bread is fermented for a very long time (anything from 6 to 48 hours!) During this time, the sugars and starches in the flour/dough break down considerably, and are consumed by the natural yeasts and bacteria found in the sourdough mixture. Because the fermentation time is so long, the sugars and starches have enough time to break down and be consumed. This is what makes it possible for sourdough bread to have a lower Glycemic Index.

"Commercial bread only ferments for 1 to 2 hours and so the sugars and starches within that bread don’t have enough time to break down, which is why conventional bread has a reputation for being high on the GI scale"

Note that the author of this piece is comparing a 'whole grain' bread fermented over a long time to a white bread, fermented for as little as 1 hour. The fact that anyone can so egregiously mislead people is galling to me

Despite the above, however, the very next section talks about phytic acid and its (negative) effect of inhibiting nutrient uptake:

Another extraordinary reaction happens during this long fermentation time the dough has. As the sugars and starches break down, so does another part of the wheat grain. A part called phytic acid, which is known as an ‘anti-nutrient’.

"Although phytic acid protects the nutrients and minerals within the wheat grain, it also blocks/inhibits the wheats’ nutrients and minerals from being absorbed by our bodies. In other words, our bodies are not able to make use of the nutrients from the wheat grain due to the phytic acid binding to them and making them unavailable.

"Although conventional bread contains nutrients in the wheat, the absorption rate of these nutrients is low. We can’t access as many of them due to the high phytic acid present in the bread.

"Sourdough is different however. The long fermentation process in sourdough bread breaks down the phytic acid in the dough. In fact, if fermented for long enough, it can almost eliminate phytic acid completely, which unlocks all of those lovely nutrients and makes them available to our bodies."

I've cut that up a little for brevity but the point that is being pressed is that long fermentation breaks down phytic acid and therefore makes nutrients available.

This is true.

HOWEVER, there are two massive caveats here. First, the author mentions only the length of fermentation so - if we accept this at face value - this is not an argument for sourdough but for long fermentation times. Second, and this is the more annoying part - whether due to a deliberate attempt to mislead or a shocking ignorance on the subject, the most important part is omitted: that the primary source for the phytic acid causing these problems is the bran layer. Which, if we are comparing wholegrain/meal sourdough to white commercial bread as we were in the first point, we would have to accept that the commercial, white bread does not suffer this phytic-acid problem!

Amazing, isn't it, how the choice of what properties you compare can seems to support an argument.

Now, at this point, I think the above is actually irrelevant as anyway as many commercial white breads are 'reinforced' with vitamins and nuitrients but bread in its un-reinforced form, is actually not a great source of nutrients anyway. If you are concerned about nutrient and vitamin intake (and even fibre) just eat some vegetables. Really. If you're looking to a change to wholegrain/meal bread in order to rectify and otherwise deficient diet, you're looking in the wrong place.

Further to the above, the 'negative' action of phytic acid is not necessarily 'bad'. This is because the action responsible for making these nutrients unavailable is one of forming chelates, which, simply, means that reactive metal ions (like iron and zinc and other mineral nutrients) are bound up into a stable and non-reactive form. It is this action that inhibits absorption by the body and is shown as a negative but the flipside is that the process also performs the same trick with problematic metals - for example heavy metals like lead. Indeed, chelation is a recognised and useful treatment for certain medical problems caused by excess of certain elements.

In short, in a balanced diet, the presence of absence of phytic acid in bread is largely a moot point, as is the availability of nutrients from the bread itself. Just eat another bloody carrot and stop blaming bread. (I am talking to the author of the above-quoted article!)

Gah!