Good morning! Paul and I went down a bit of a rabbit hole the other day, looking at what passes for sourdough at the grocery store. Sourdough is having a moment, and the imitators seem to be increasing. For clarity, here’s what real sourdough is:

While sourdough is marketed as a flavor, it’s actually a leavening method. A sourdough starter is a live fermented culture with just two ingredients: flour and water. Over time, natural yeast and healthy bacteria (aka microbes) join those two ingredients.

When you feed a sourdough starter (stir in water and flour), those microbes eat the sugars in the flour and release carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide raises the bread by getting “trapped” in the gluten structure.

From a nutrition standpoint, sourdough helps predigest some of the flour, and this may be one reason why sourdough bread is often easier for those with wheat or gluten sensitivities to eat.

From a flavor standpoint, yes, there’s a distinctive flavor to sourdough. That distinctive flavor comes from the balance of the two acids in sourdough: lactic (think dairy) and acetic (think vinegar).

Here’s how to spot a faker amidst the sourdough offerings at the store: if you see vinegar as an ingredient, it’s probably there to create the sourdough flavor, especially if you also see yeast as an ingredient. If there are unidentifiable ingredients on the list, it’s probably not real sourdough either. 

Daily Grains always makes real sourdough bread. We’re not using artificial ingredients to save time, skip steps, or make our bread last forever. You could go back in time 100 years and still make our bread with the same ingredients and methods. 

Or as I like to say, good food takes time. Knowing that, we’d be honored to bake your bread this week.

- Ashley & Paul

Bread
Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Einkorn Sourdough Bread
Multigrain Sourdough Bread
Rosemary Olive Oil Sourdough Bread
Spelt Sourdough Bread

Cookies
Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Chip Cookie
Brownie Cookie
Oatmeal Raisin Cookie
Spiced Molasses Cookie

Specialty Flours
Einkorn Wheat Flour
Kamut® Wheat Flour
Ryman Rye Flour
Spelt Wheat Flour
Turkey Red Wheat Flour

Rolls & Muffins
Spelt English Muffins
Thaw-and-Bake Hot Rolls

Mixes
Cinnamon & Oat Pancake Mix
Einkorn Pancake Mix