sourdough bread

Health Benefits

Did you know that sourdough bread is simply the best bread you can eat? 

Sourdough bread is so good for you is because it’s made by the natural fermentation of the bread dough. A living culture of lactobacilli and wild yeasts, originating from spores on the wheat grain and in the air, is added to the flour, water and salt which then is mixed to form the dough. These wild microbes feast on the dough, breaking it down and aerating it by releasing carbon dioxide. This fermentation process ultimately makes the bread more digestible, more nutritious with lower gluten content and a lower GI (glycaemic index).  Commercially yeasted (non-sourdough) bread uses a concentrated single strain of yeast which aerates the dough with carbon dioxide but does not ferment it.  Baker’s yeast ‘puffs up’ the dough very quickly, whereas aeration by fermentation takes much longer. That’s why the gluten in bread made with commercial yeast is so unhealthy for your gut.  Before baker’s yeast was created to use in bread baking in the early 1900s, the traditional fermentation (sourdough) method of bread-making using a wild culture was how all bread was made. The resulting bread is called ‘sourdough’ because the other by-product of fermentation is acid, making the dough, and baked bread, taste a little sour. Irrewarra sourdough is fermented at ambient temperatures, not in refrigeration, so the sourness is very mild.