Sourdough yeast is the secret of many breads with a strong personality. Its preparation is simple and is available to everyone. Dare to try!
Most bakers use yeast, a microscopic fungus that feeds on the sugars in flour and produces gas and alcohol. But natural sourdough has, in addition to yeast, bacteria that colonize it.
SOURDOUGH, THE KEY TO GOOD BREAD
The natural ferment is the secret that many great loaves hide. It is a dough made exclusively with flour and water, and populated spontaneously by microorganisms (yeasts and bacteria) that inhabit flour and the environment. It has been used for millennia by bakers to leavened bread.
What was at first a mandatory way of working dough, over time (and the availability of baker’s yeast) has become an option that many bakers already discard. They prefer to use yeast exclusively, which allows them to make bread in much less time.
ADVANTAGES OF SOURDOUGH
Natural sourdough ferments more slowly, but is capable of producing breads with extraordinary organoleptic characteristics, amazing shelf life and what many would identify as “bread-bread flavor.”
As if this were not enough, sourdough bread is more digestive, allows the absorption of more minerals and has a lower glycemic index.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
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The baker always keeps a little old dough that he feeds with flour and water every day. Depending on the bread you want to make, you vary the basic parameters of the fermentation (temperature, humidity of the dough and duration of fermentation): you can achieve from a mild ferment and sweet aromas for a delicate brioche to the soul of rustic breads with character. .
The beauty of sourdough is that it is a spontaneous product, which varies with the environment, and therefore unique in each place; the sourdough of each region and each baker is different (there are bakeries that boast of preserving the same sourdough for several generations, even centuries).
MAKING BREAD AT HOME, A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
Touching the warm and moist dough, watching it slowly evolve while it ferments, taking a crispy piece out of the oven… this is an experience that more and more people are signing up for because of the satisfaction it provides.
Baking bread is a transcendent experience, a reunion with slowness, a compliment to duration. To make bread is to rediscover the natural rhythms of life; understand why swifts only return in spring and it is impossible to pay (even if you have a lot of money) to enjoy a sky with swifts in December. In one sentence: making bread brings us closer to the earth.
CREATE SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
Mixing flour and water has a lot of telluric. The initiatory ritual of mixing flour and water like clay and then subjecting it to the incredible process of fermentation, the metamorphosis from which a new being emerges.…
Anyone who has ever taken a crispy, browned piece out of an oven knows this; anyone who has kneaded a dense, moist, warm dough knows it; anyone who has put their hand on a fermenting loaf, full of aroma and life, knows it.
