Sour Dough, Sweet Life

Debby Peng grew up in the lower mainland and moved to the Northern BC six years ago for work. She has had the opportunity to explore many nooks and crannies along highway 16 and on the way met interesting people and enjoyed many amazing experiences. She picked up some new hobbies as well, including her new found love for making sourdough bread. Her speech tonight is entitled, “Sour Dough, Sweet Life”.

Sour Dough, Sweet Life

I cannot play the violin. I cannot do backflips and I am absolutely hopeless in a pair of skis on top of mountain. But, I can make a fantastic loaf of sourdough bread. By fantastic, I mean a crackling, crisp crust, soft-chewy interior, moist crumb, tart tangy flour. Something that is rustic and delicious with butter as morning toasts, makes a mean sandwich with some mustard for lunch, and a lovely sponge to mop up any sauces or stews at dinner time. I can go on. 

Sourdough gets its yeasty rise and tantalizingly tangy aroma from wild yeasts that exist naturally in our environment. As the story goes (and I must prefer a short rather than long story), grain farmers ditched their simple porridge made from mashing up grains, and flat breads, made from baking said porridge on hot stones, when they discovered strange properties in leftover four and water mixture. It would bubble, expand and produce a funny smell (we now know this is from the fermentation), and when baked created a chewy texture, wonderful aroma. Thus the first bread in history was born. 

You might ask – how does sourdough differ from bread made with commercial yeas? 

This mixture, called a “starter” when added to the baker’s mix create delicious bread full of holes, with a firm springy crust. My starter came to me via Japan and is about 3 years old. In sourdough standard, this is not old at all. The famous San Francisco bakery Boudin recently celebrated its 160’s anniversary and it boasts of using the same starter!

The distinctive sourness comes from a microscopic form of collaboration and partnership between strains of Saccharomyces yeast species and the lactic acid producing bacteria, lactobacilius. This is the secret of a longer shelf life for the sourdough. And don’t forget gluten, which is the protein in all forms of wheat, rye, barley, that forms the architecture and scaffolds that trap the CO2, which is a metabolism byproduct of the yeasts, and make the bread rise. The resulting fermentation process renders the protein more digestible and increase the nutritional value of the bread. 

Another difference is amount of time it takes to develop – 3 hours for conventional baking  from start to finish versus 10-12 hours of proofing alone (time allowed for dough to grow silky, soft, pillowy before heading into the oven). Not to mention the daily care taking required for each pet starter – stirring, feeding, weighing, relationship building. 

The starter is also known as the mother, or culture. In biology, the word culture means the growth and cultivation of microorganism of a similar origin, like a tissue culture meant for medicinal use. But I also think about the word’s inherit literal and metaphorical associations. When I make the bread, I feel connected with my hands, with my food. I feel in control over a big part of my diet and the growing sense of connection with vital processes that can be trusted to be good. I take delight in sharing the result with others – case to point, I’ve been baking 2 loaves a day and need friends to sign up to take them away from my kitchen. In sharing food, I discover sense of community: sharing stories and knowledge without any expectation of a return. Food unites us around a table. 

As I ponder the relevant of sourdough, the simple truth that comes back to me again and again is that amazing things take time. The building of a community of likeminded people around me, like a culture, one cell or molecule at a time, cannot be rushed. I realize also, that in Prince Rupert, our unique rain coast, with its moist air and sea breeze, this is the perfect environment for wild yeast to grow and flourish.