Sourdough

Natural remedies that bring benefits to our body are herbal teas, essential oils but also foods, ways to prepare dishes or the choose of particular ingredients. The sourdough belongs to the last one. The sourdough, or mother yeast, natural yeast, sourdough starter, is a yeast for the preparation of bread and baked goods made up of flour and water. Nowadays, for the preparation of bread the most commonly used yeast is brewer’s yeast. However, this type of yeast has been only introduced in the nineteenth century and before this time sourdough starter was always used. This type of yeast has acidic organoleptic characteristics deriving from the metabolism of lactobacilli, present in the sourdough together with the yeasts. This very particular composition gives to the bread a more intense, tasty flavor and makes it healthier. In fact, the bread obtained from the sourdough starter is more digestible, it can be kept better and longer, brings trace elements and does not cause demineralization. In fact, bread with sourdough requires slow fermentation of lactobacilli and this helps to limit the activity of the phytic acid present in the external part of the grain. Phytic acid, once in the body, combines with calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc and prevents their assimilation. This is what happening with the brown bread obtained with the fast fermentation of the brewer’s yeast. The same effect is not observed with refined bread that does not contain phytic acid because it does not contain bran. However, refined bread is obtained from refined flour, is completely without nutrients and results harmful for the levels of blood sugar. In addition to these characteristics, bread made with sourdough contains live lactic cultures. Because of the long process required by the dough obtained with sourdough starter, breads of more than 1 Kg are usually prepared. These breads can last for days and during cooking their internal part does not exceed 50 ° C, keeping the lactic cultures alive. These lactic cultures bring benefit to the intestinal bacterial flora, ensuring a good functioning of the intestine. Bread made with sourdough can be bought or self-produced at home. Sometimes sourdough is handed down from generation to generation, if this is not your case you can prepare it yourself or buy it in organic food stores, in this case however the sourdough is in dry form and in this preparation also traditional dry yeast is added to trigger fermentation. The production and maintenance of sourdough will be the subject of a forthcoming video blog.