The Benefits of Sourdough Bread

Sourdough bread, when made from scratch, is more than just a delicious vehicle to get butter into your belly! It is also a highly nourishing food.

If you would have told me a few years ago that I would now be eating bread on a regular basis, I would not have believed you!  Like, not at all. 

I started following a Paleo diet in 2011, eating that way meant I cut out bread, among other foods. I would eat it very occasionally, as a “special treat”. The bread I ate was sourdough from my local grocery store. It was not made with quality ingredients…I didn’t know this mattered as much until I went through my nutrition therapy training.

Fast forward 10 years and here I am, not only eating bread but baking it, from scratch using wild yeast!  I am officially hooked on making sourdough!

What spurred my journey?

Last spring, it seemed like every time I opened Instagram, I saw someone’s freshly baked loaf of sourdough bread.  Every loaf made me drool!

Those loaves also sparked my interest in learning more about sourdough’s health benefits and making my own, including a starter.  But it wasn’t the right time for me to add another thing to my plate…we were getting ready to move, Anghus was in full toddler mode(he still is) keeping me always on my toes and we had just experienced a pregnancy loss, so I had plenty happening.

None the less I expressed my interest to my boyfriend, and he encouraged me to get it going….he admittedly loves a good slice of bread, sourdough being a favorite!

Now, I like to make my man happy and food is definitely our love language! So I made a pledge to myself to get a sourdough starter going once we settled into our new home. Plus, trying new recipes is one of my favorite hobbies!

As with most things, it took Anghus and I longer to get settled into a daily routine that worked well. But, we got there and in August I went about building my starter.

That too took longer than I thought it would. In my research, I read in lots of places that a starter would be ready to use within 10 days. That was not the case for me. It took nearly a full month!

Part of this may be because we had a warm house at the time(August in Missouri with no central a/c) and I wasn’t feeding my little starter often enough, so the wild yeast was not surviving in large quantity. Also, I switched from whole wheat flour to all-purpose all at once. I found out later that is not the proper way to do such a thing…it is better to transition a little at a time.

But at last, I thought I had enough life in my sourdough starter to give baking a loaf a go!

My first loaf of sourdough wasn’t much to look at. It was flat, pretty dense without many of those lovely holes that a good sourdough has. But, it tasted good!!

Each loaf got slowly better, a little higher, a few more bubbles showing me that my starter was getting stronger. It was just enough motivation to keep me going. I was on a mission to perfect my sourdough loaves!

Benefits of Sourdough

The long fermentation that sourdough goes through creates a bread that carries many more health benefits than a bread that is created with a fast fermentation, think yeast bread and most commercial bread.

Allowing the dough to ferment for 8 or more hours leads to increased amounts of bioavailable nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and fiber. So in short, these nutrients are easier for your body to use!

As you lengthen the fermentation time, the more pre-digestion of the flour takes place. This is important because wheat contains a large amount of phytic acid. Phytic acid will bind with minerals that are essential and flush them out before your body can use them. During the fermentation stage, the wild yeast and lactobacillus bacteria break down phytic acid before you eat it, making that lovely slice of bread easier for your body to digest and ensures you are not losing much-needed minerals.

Long fermented sourdough is also a prebiotic which helps to support a healthy gut microbiome. A robust microbiome is very important to all aspects of health, especially your immune system since 80% of your immune system resides in your GI track.

And, if you are like me, making sourdough is therapeutic!! Creating delicious food has always been something that I enjoy. Pulling a beautiful loaf of sourdough from the oven that I mixed, stretched, and folded with my own hands just makes my soul happy!!

My favorite places to learn

As I started my sourdough baking journey, which honestly started months before I actually mixed up my starter, I did a fair amount of reading to wrap my head around the process. I wanted to feel ready for anything that might come up!

Here are some of my favorite online resource for learning about making sourdough

• Jovial Foods – Great place to learn about making einkorn sourdough. Their videos are wonderful. Plus, I love using their einkorn flours to make my loaves since it provides more nutrients than modern-day wheat.
• Radical Roots – Laura offers lots of great info on baking sourdough.
• King Arthur – King Arthur is known for quality flours and their knowledge on all this baking, including sourdough, is vast!
• Farmhouse on Boone – Lisa offers all sorts of great homemaking info and her sourdough recipes are great!

I will be sharing more on sourdough in the upcoming weeks, including hot to maintain a starter, my loaf recipe and more!

Let me know in the comments if you have very made bread from scratch or if making sourdough is something you would like to try!