Home Made Sourdough Bread
What is sourdough bread? Traditional sourdough bread recipes contain three simple ingredients. To make it, you need salt, flour, and the magical alchemy of a sourdough starter. There is no need for instant or fresh yeast, milk, oils, eggs, or sweeteners. A sourdough starter is a fermented mix of flour and water that contains colonies of bacteria and yeast. The yeasts in the starter are varying strains of Saccharomyces , which are wild relatives of yeast used in commercial preparations. In sourdough bread, the starter acts as the rising agent. The yeast uses the carbohydrates from flour to produce ethanol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide becomes trapped in the bread dough, which makes it rise. "It's different from bread made with commercial yeast in that it takes much longer to ferment fully," says Maurizio Leo, baker and author of the Perfect Loaf . "Additionally, the dough will have increased flavor due to the organic acids c...