It's A Green Thing. Sourdough, Whole Grain: Is It Really That Good & Good For Your Health?
Do you love sourdough bread? Should it be whole grain too, or will the whole grain effect the sourdough flavor?
We all know that whole grain bread is more healthy than other breads. But did you know that sourdough bread is good for our health also. So if we combine the two, we should have a super food in bread. But what about flavor. When you love sourdough you love that special sour, tasty flavor. Eating sourdough bread helps keep you green and healthy, and our world too.
Flavor and/or health they both are important, aren't they.
So let's take a quick trip into baking bread, especially sourdough.
- a quick history of making bread, because it's important to understanding the way we bake our breads commercially today,
- look at the importance of sourdough & whole grains in our diet,
- what are sourdough starters, & why are they are so important to flavor
- how they make sourdough bread different from other bread,
- the important health benefits of sourdough & whole grain bread
Not All Sourdough Is Created Equal When It Comes To Flavor Is it?
Sourdough bread can be tasty and tangy and healthy. Whole grain adds to the health benefits. Have you found blaaaa tasting sourdough bread. I have. Let me know if you have found a really goooood, flavorful sourdough bread.
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Reply
- Sid Schaffer Sid Schaffer Oct 5, 2009 @ 4:10 pm
- I am asking if all sourdough bread is whole grain bread or can it not be whole grain? So the question is if I buy any sourdough bread am I getting a whole grain bread
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- JaguarJulie JaguarJulie Feb 19, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
- Our friends have a breadmaker and will make sourdough bread once in a while. I love sourdough rolls that we sometimes get with dinner when we eat out.
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- slotowngal slotowngal Feb 15, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
- I love sourdough bread! Grew up in California, where it was always available and always delicious. Now I live in the East, and it's hard to get a good loaf of sourdough in our area. I'm glad to know it has health properties.... thanks!
What's Going Here
First a little history. The Egyptians apparently were the first to discover the process of leavening bread somewhere around 2300 BC. Prior to 1950, bread dough was fermented slowly all night long before baking. The long fermentation period, using whole grain flour created a bread product that contained 18 amino acids (proteins), complex carbohydrate (for energy), B vitamins, iron, zinc, selenium, magnesium, and maltase.
Sounds healthy, and it is the long fermentation period that is the critical part of this good, healthy bread.
Then in the 1950s, larger bakery companies decided to begin shorter fermentation periods. A quick loaf of bread could be prepared in just a few hours, instead of overnight, thus eliminating a night shift of bakers, which led to higher profits. Today, some commercial bakeries produce a loaf of bread in just 40 minutes. What most of us don't realize is that bread that is not properly fermented, at least overnight, becomes a highly allergenic food.
Bread dough that is properly leavened over a 6 to 8 hour period, will have yeast spores, lactobacilli and friendly bacteria drawn into the sourdough starter and whole wheat flour from the air. Mixing the starter with more flour and water and a little salt forms bread dough. As the bacteria thrives on the nutrient-rich whole grain flour, they produce carbon dioxide gas.
As fermentation continues, during the leavening process bacteria feed on the sugars in flour, and produce acidic by-products. This is what gives sourdough its sour taste. This taste is further enhanced because the predominant yeast in sourdough, ''Saccharomyces exiguus", cannot metabolize maltose, one of the sugars present in flour. However, the bacteria need maltose to survive and thrive, so there is a synergistic relationship between the yeast and bacteria since the bacteria will have more maltose to feed on during the fermentation process. The longer the process the greater the tangy flavor, and health effects.
Health benefits of sour dough bread, white of whole wheat, are surprising. A university research study was conducted on four types of breads to determine which had the most positive health effects when it comes to carbohydrate metabolism, blood sugar and insulin levels.
The breads included, white, whole wheat, whole wheat with barley and sourdough. The persons included in the study, were overweight and between 50 and 60 years of age. The most positive results in terms of blood sugar levels occured after eating sourdough white bread, and the effect lasted longer than after eating the other breads. Blood sugar levels did not spike after eating the sourdough bread, which it did with the other breads.
This led the researchers to conclude that eating sourdough bread assists in controlling weight. They also concluded that eating whole grain bread is more healthy then eating whole wheat bread, since some of the most beneficial parts of the grain are removed when baking whole wheat.
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The Best of Sourdough Bread
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byHealth Benefits of Whole Grain Sourdough Bread
- weight loss
- reduces the risk of coronary heart disease
- improves eliminations
- lowers LDL cholesterol
- less risk of type 2 diabetes
- lowers risk of digestive cancers
- risk of stroke declines
More About Sourdough Bread
Sourdough is a dough containing a lactobacillus culture, usually in symbiotic combination with yeasts. It is one of two principal means of leavening in bread baking, along with the use of cultivated forms of yeast (Saccharomyces). It is of particular importance in baking rye-based breads, where yeast does not produce comparable results. In comparison with yeast-based breads, it produces a distinctively tangy or sour taste, mainly because of the lactic acid produced by the lactobacilli; the actual medium, known as "starter" or levain, is essentially an ancestral form of pre-ferment. In English-speaking countries, where wheat-based breads predominate, sourdough is no longer the standard method for bread leavening. It was gradually replaced, first by the use of barm from beermaking, then, after the confirmation of germ theory by Louis Pasteur, by cultured yeasts. However, some form of natural leaven is still used by many speciality bakeries.
Sourdough bread is made by using a small amount (20-25 percent) of starter dough (sometimes known as "the mother sponge"), which contains the culture, and mixing it with new flour and water. Part of this resulting dough is then saved to use as the starter for the next batch. As long as the starter dough is fed flour and water weekly, the sourdough mixture can stay in room temperature indefinitely and remain healthy and usable. It is not uncommon for a baker's starter dough to have years of history, from many hundreds of previous batches. As a result, each bakery's sourdough has a distinct taste. The combination of starter, culture and air temperature, humidity, and elevation also makes each batch of sourdough different.
White Sourdough or Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread
I like whole wheat sourdough bread although not as common as the white version. The health benefits are greater with the whole wheat flour and I think it enhances the flavor of the sourdough. What do you think.
by BamBusiness
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