Secrets of Sourdough

Today, you can find a huge variety of breads on supermarket
shelves, only a few of which are called “sourdough.” For most of
human history, though, any bread that wasn’t flat was
sourdough—that is, it was leavened with a wild community of
microbes. And yet we know surprisingly little about the microbes
responsible for raising sourdough bread, not to mention making it
more nutritious and delicious than bread made with commercial
yeast. For starters, where do the fungi and bacteria in a sourdough
starter come from? Are they in the water or the flour? Do they come
from the baker’s hands? Or perhaps they’re just floating around in
the foggy air, as the bakers of San Francisco firmly believe? This
episode, Cynthia and Nicky go to Belgium with two researchers,
fifteen bakers, and quite a few microbes for a three-day science
experiment designed to answer this question once and for all.
Listen in for our exclusive scoop on the secrets of sourdough.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
podcastchoices.com/adchoices