This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
Bakers who turn to making sourdough bread do so out of love for the product, the ancestral technique and, above all, the taste. A look at this tradition, as October 16 is World Bread Day.
“Sourdough is nothing other than water and flour,” immediately warns Annika Wegerle, head baker and co-owner of the German-influenced Montreal artisanal microbakery Son & Seigle. “There are several ways to think about sourdough bread,” she explains. From a historical point of view, it is a very old technique practiced for a long time, well before the advent of industrial yeast. In Europe, generally speaking, the tradition of sourdough bread is more anchored than here. »
In reality, sourdough is simply a way of cultivating the wild yeasts already present in flour, in the air and on our hands. Things then get more complex, since the leavening depends entirely on the person making it. “It’s proven: each baker makes different bread because of the bacteria and yeast in his hands. A sourdough in California will also be very different from a Quebec sourdough, because it is not the same environment,” explains Annika Wegerle, amused.
To make sourdough, all you need is to mix the same quantity of water and flour, a pair of hands and a little discipline. “And then you have to feed it twice a day with equal parts flour and water. After one to two weeks, depending on the temperatures, it will begin to be alive and we will be able to observe bubbles forming, see the activity of the dough rising and falling,” she adds. Once the sourdough is ready and has fermented well, the key is to keep it alive. The more you feed the sourdough, the healthier and more airy it will be thanks to the CO2 which is created.
Unlike bread made with industrial yeast, sourdough bread also requires more preparation time. “With yeast, you can have bread ready to bake in two hours, but with sourdough, the time is on average doubled in order to let it rest so that it rises,” points out the baker. There is no magic recipe. At Son & Seigle, the pre-baking process can last up to three days. “One morning, we prepare the dough with the sourdough, we leave it to ferment at room temperature for three to five hours – the more bread there is, the faster it goes! The next day, we shape the bread before letting it rest a little and putting it in the fridge overnight, and the day after that, we bake it,” says Annika Wegerle.
Taste the difference
Originally from the Mannheim region, the head baker favors flours other than modern wheat for her loaves. “I grew up with sourdough breads made from spelled flour and rye flour in particular,” she says. At the bakery, we make half white wheat flour, half whole rye flour, also because rye is very rich in natural sugar and, therefore, it ferments really well. » Indeed, Annika Wegerle confides that whole flours ferment faster, because they are richer in nutrients. “Not only for us, but also for the microorganisms that are yeasts,” she explains.
“The fun for me is working with different grains that have different tastes. You think of bread, you think of wheat, that’s for sure, and all our breads contain it, but I find it more interesting to work with several flours,” adds Annika Wegerle.If this choice proves laborious, because, among other things, it is necessary to constantly adapt to the specificities of each of the raw materials, it is worth the effort. “Ancient wheat, like khorasan, is more digestible because its gluten composition is different from that of the wheat we are used to consuming,” she notes. Furthermore, sourdough is, by nature, more digestible. “The more you let something ferment, the more it is already predigested,” concludes this fan of slow food.
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