When is Sourdough NOT Sour??

Many of us in California were introduced to Sourdough Bread via the 'San Francisco Sourdough' style breads.  It is a tangy, white bread.  It also had a 'different' crumb feel when compared to the famous grocery store white sandwich breads.  To me, the sourdough bread had the feel of several day old white bread.  I really enjoy very fresh bread - and the sourdough from the store not only had a vinegar/sour taste, but a several day old feel.  Not my favorite - but that's the sourdough that I was exposed to.

I started out baking yeast breads:  Yes - using commercial yeast.  For some reason it gets a bad rap.

Commercial yeast was developed in the WWII era as a means of simplifying bread making in remote kitchens set up to feed soldiers.  Previously, sensitive sourdough starter (a gooey thing) or more sensitive 'beer brew foam', skimmed off the mash as it fermented during the process of making beer and ale, was used to leaven the bread, causing the bacterial to infect the grain/water mix resulting in creating carbon dioxide gas which inflates the 'gluten bubbles' causing the entire dough to rise.  Both of these items were hard to transport.  White flour was very common (whole grain flour less the bran and germ - the red colored, fibrous part of the wheat berry) and it had a great shelf life.  Salt was important to making bread - and it had a great shelf life and was easy to transport.  Water, was available in most place - or at least brought in for many other reasons, so it was there.  This left the leavener (or yeast) as the weak link in the field kitchen.

In laboratories, a single strain of yeast was extracted from the multiples of bacteria that grew when flour and water was combined.  This single strain of bacteria could be dried and easily transported to a field kitchen where it would be 'reconstituted' into a living culture that would infect the flour and create the carbon dioxide that the gluten in the flour would capture and make bubbles resulting in lift in the bread dough.  The yeast would die once the bread hit 140º as the bread was baked to a final temperature of around 200º +/- 10º or so depending on the flour.  So, with this 'commercial yeast', the fourth component of basic white bread was made portable.

By the way, it turns out that a small hunk (about 1/2 cup) of mixed dough can be preserved from one batch to 'infect' another batch with this yeast culture.  While this is not so convenient in a field kitchen, it is what small European bakeries did all along so they didn't need to keep procuring their leavening 'stuff' from the brewer (that foam from the brewing process).  Of course, this is the concept behind our American sourdough breads.

Not sour sourdough.  Tell tale glistening crumb with irregular big holes.  

In my research and occasional dabbling with 'sourdough bread making' over the past two years, I found that in most places in France (and all Europe, I believe), if a baker creates a sour tasting loaf, it is viewed as a baker's mistake.  Using a natural leavener is not at all uncommon (a northern California bakery calls their naturally leavened breads "Country Loaves" in reference to the French countryside bakers) but the baker's art includes managing the leavening agent so that the sourness is minimized.

So, commercial yeast was the 'upgrade' for the sourdough starter - more compact, easily transportable, reliable and even faster acting.  Also, the commercial yeast didn't 'taint' the flavor with even a bit of sourness.

Another factor in the commercial yeast is that 'anyone can do it' - or, you don't have to be a sourdough culture manager to bake bread with commercial yeast.  That's why I use commercial yeast.


Not sour sourdough?   You mean that the European breads using 'natural leavened' didn't taste sour?  Hmmm - then maybe it's worth a try, though, I don't have any interest in being a manager of the leavener.

As I read about the influencing factors that make sourdough bread more sour, I see that temperature, food (as in which types of flour are used to feed the starter), freshness (at what stage of development the starter is when used for mixing with dough) and time all impact sourness.  But, the big news is that sourdough doesn't need to be sour.