June 23, 2017 • 44 mins
Beyond San Francisco, beyond Paris, sourdough bread has a long, rich history closely connected to beer and one of our old friends, fermentation. Anney and Lauren mine into the science, culture and history of sourdough bread, and have fun with the names of sourdough starters along the way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren Volgavon and
I'm an Eries and our topic for today is sour dough. Bread. Yes,
sour dough the bread. I don't know what else it
would be, but I'm sure something humans are real creative
and and why sour dough in particular. Well, as it
turns out, bread is not a small topic of human history.
(00:29):
In fact, it is an enormous topic. It is a
very large undertaking just to do sour dough. So not
to have a tin plus our episode, we're gonna like
look at different types of bread and today um and
bread on top of having information, uh there, there's it's
(00:52):
so important to so many different cultures. Oh yeah, give
us a stay or daily bread or all the idioms
um like to earn his bread, or even the etymology
of words like companion, which is a combo of two
Latin words meaning someone you'll share your bread with all
the pan in it. I bet. Oh my goodness, yeah,
I didn't realize. And now I'm like, I'll share my
(01:14):
bread with you Laura's Oh I would share my bread
with you Annie. Oh okay. I also, oh this is
this is another one that made me really hungry. Um,
sour dough might be my favorite type of bread. Sour
dough is delicious. Whenever my mom baked sour dough, I
would smell at my room and I knew it was
going to be a very special special night. Ah. My
(01:34):
my mom would make would make a non non sour
dough bread that was always a really good day as well.
But Uh, sour dough, as the name suggests, is sour bread,
and it involves two things that we wind up talking
about a lot here on food stuff, yeast and yeast's
fermentation of stuff. Exactly. Basically, if you leave some wheat,
(01:56):
flour and water or a lump of unbaked dough out
naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria, while yeast get up in there,
they get a fermentation party started, and when you add
more flour and water to that starter, you can make bread. Uh.
The yeast in sour dough or any bread really has
enzymes that break some of flowers starches down into sugars
(02:18):
and um. The yeast, which are you know, single celled fungi,
eat some of those sugars and excrete carbon dioxide and
alcohol fermentation. Except here the alcohol is really just a
just a flavoring agent. It helps break down other molecules
in the flour that produce all of the amazing flavors
and the smells that you get in bread. All of
those aromatics, um and the carbon dioxide gas is what
(02:41):
will make the bread rise, assuming that you've needed and
rested the dough so that it's remaining. Starch molecules are
are glutinous a k a Like chainey and stretchy rather
than just like flir. Yeah, you don't want flour in
your bread. Are generally sounds like something you want to
always avoid the flour. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the lactic acid bacteria
(03:07):
and you'll remember those from our yogurt episode. Yes, yes,
they are also eating some of those sugars and excreting
a up lactic acid. More bacteria poo Lauren's favorite things. Yes,
it makes everything better here. It produces the acidity that
gives sour dough that distinctive taste, although generally speaking, a
(03:27):
sour dough does not have to be sour, just has
to be made using wild yeasts and bacteria mh. By
the way, the longer that you let a sour dough starter,
you know that the flour and water mix or the
or the dough lump kind of sit out that the
more flavors should develop over time, right, because you give
them bacteria more time to do its more time learning.
(03:48):
Yes um. According to Edwoods Worlds sour doughs from antiquity
authentic recipes from modern baker's quote, a true our dough
is nothing more than flour and water with wild yeast
to make it rise and special bacteria to provide the flavor.
Uh bonus. As in yogurt, the lactic acid produced by
(04:10):
the bacteria and and the alcohol produced by the yeast
prevent the growth of harmful bacteria in your sitting starter
Um extra bonus. You can save a lump of your dough,
feed it more flour and water, and use it to
make more other leavened bread later on. Just like with yogurt,
This culture will last for you know, as long as
(04:33):
you keep it alive. How long could that be? I
I read claims of centuries and they've been unable to
prove it. But yeah, that's why I'm That's why I'm
going on the safe side. And the same day there's
there's at least one San Francisco bakery that claims over
a hundred years. Ah, I suspect I know which one
that is, and I think we're going to be talking
(04:55):
about them. We will, indeed, But before we get there,
let's let's look at the history. Yeah, a little a
little bit deeper in the history than a hundred years ago.
Here we go. History. Bread has been around for like ever.
The oldest loaf of bread discovered at this point, UM
was in Switzerland, going back todd or maybe BC history. Yeah,
(05:21):
both dates. Yeah, I think I saw just rates somewhere
in that range. Yeah, wall paintings and bread romains, which
is not the best put it, but pretty much the
only way I could think of putting it. UM indicate
that the ancient Egyptians were using sour dough starters to
(05:42):
bake leavened bread, possibly going back up to five thousand
years and kind of like honey, it could go back
even further prewritten words, because it's the thing that just happens,
and because of that, it was probably discovered by accident
when some unsuspecting left out dough encountered some wild and
it's usually of the genus Zaccar mices candida. Yes, I
(06:06):
hope I got close on that. Pronunciation. I don't know,
I think that that that was spot on. Yes, yeah,
um so yeah yeah, like a like early um fermentation
of of beer and wine and stuff. Yeah, this is
just stuff that was happening in nature. Um. So it's
really hard to pinpoint an original date. No one is like, hey, guys,
(06:27):
I was the one who discovered the sour dough. Although
whoever it was who discovered that this was a thing,
it was almost certainly related to beer brewing. Yes, um,
because the discovery of beer entailed a lot of experimenting
with starter cultures and baking and beer brewing often happened
(06:49):
in the same space, so it could have gone down
that way. Or according to Lawn Walter's Old West Baking Book,
baker got the idea to add either one of the
beers arder cultures or beer barm to flower and water
to see what happened. Barn, by the way, is the
disgummy kind of foam that develops on top of stuff
while it's fermenting. Yes, this also tripped us up in
(07:12):
our six hundred year old meat recipe. Yeah, I had
no idea what that was. I was, also, to be
fair quite drunk. Um. There was a lot of meat.
Very early in the morning there was It was ten am, y'all.
I hadn't had breakfast, and this very nice man brought
us ten samples of meat, and he kept pouring large
sample anyway. It was lovely, it was. But I thought
the barb was just the funniest word I had ever
heard in my entire life at that juncture. It's a
(07:33):
pretty good one. Back to the beer beers, they tried
out a bunch of different cultures and discovered that They
tried him out with the bread, and they discovered that
some made lighter, fluffier breads. And they take a piece
of that dough from a bat they liked, and then
add some flower to keep it alive. Ak a sour
(07:53):
dough starter And a quote from Lawn Walter's book. I
really liked quote. Each starter has its own characteristic taste
and smell. Many older starters are guarded by their owners
as if they were a key to heaven. They're passed
on generation to generation, and really, share 's not so
friendly bread. No, it's a different time, still kind of happened,
(08:16):
and people give these family starters fun names like Clint Eastwood.
I enjoyed looking through those names, there's yeah, there's there's
there's good lists out there. Um. And of course folks
at this time had no idea, oh why this was happening.
You know, they just knew that if they took a
little bit of this one thing that they made turned
out good and they put it into their next batch,
that next batch turned out good too, right, And going
(08:39):
back to a mead guy briefly for a second, corn
to him, that's why we call spirit spirits because they
didn't know what was happening that was causing the fermentation
in the alcohol, and it was kind of like you're
praying to the spirits. Yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, the
soul of the beer, please make my beer beer and
not just rotten barley water, right, because one thing is
(09:01):
better than that other thing. I easially want you to
help me out on this. I hope that that is true.
But it's a fun story. Nonetheless, Yes, thank you, thank
you to Justin of Monks Mead for that, for that
lovely story. Yes, thank you Justin. So anyway, bread making
and sour dough spread from ancient Egypt to ancient Greece
sometime around eight hundred BC, and at the time it
(09:24):
was a luxury only for the wealthy, and the baking
of it was left completely to women. This was a
fact that everywhere I read they felt compelled to include
a beer. At the time, too, I think was lady work.
So it wasn't until eight hundred BC that written records
of bakeries offering bread for sale pop up an ancient Greece.
(09:44):
There we go, and then after contact with Greece, sour
do traveled to ancient Rome, where improved methods of needing
and baking made bread more widely available, and in one
six b C. Cato the Elder detailed several different types
of bread. Greece also spread sour dough to France sometime
around the fourth century BC. Greeks living in France noticed
(10:06):
that if you replaced the water and bread dough with
the foam from a beer like fermented drink, it produced
a lighter, fluffier bread, and the cloudier the loquid, the
better the end product. Due to Paris's proximity to the
major we producing area of the region, it produced some
of the country's first bakers, and at the time all
the bread they were baking was sour dough, both because
(10:27):
it was all they knew fermentation wise, and it was
cheaper because you didn't need any expensive salt thanks to
the acidity. Ah. Yeah, assault also helps break down molecules
in rising bread and in uh starters, making it more flavorful,
tasty stuff. And then one of our old friends, Pliny
the Elder, he talked about a lot of things. He
(10:50):
really did. He wrote in his seventies seven ce Ish
Encyclopedia Natural History that quote, Generally, however, they do not
heat it up at all, but only used the dough
kept over from the day before. Manifestly, it is natural
for sourness to make the dope ferment, and likewise that
people who live on fermented bread have weaker bodies, inasmuch
(11:12):
as in old days outstanding wholesomeness was ascribed to wheat,
the heavier it was. Okay. Yeah. He also claimed that
sara dough was better for health, which is truish due
to the good bacteria. I suppose. Yeah, there is a
teeny amount of research, teeny prttern research, not like Pliny res.
(11:38):
I wonder what research Planny was doing. I'm sure it
was fascinating. But according to a two thousand eight acted
diabetological study and a two thousand and eleven study out
of clinical gastro intrology and hepatology in Italy indicating that
due to the lower amount of gluten content and sour
dough bread, it may be more tolerable for people with
(11:58):
stilly exercise. Small sample sizes though, um it does produce
a smaller search of glucoast than most other breads. Well
that's good news. Yeah so grain of salt, grain of salt.
It but the research does exist around the same time,
plenty time. Uh. Roman poet Juneo All wrote satire ten
(12:23):
or the famous and recently Hunger Games repopularized phrase Panama
senses our bread and circuses comes from. Okay, so that
takes care of the ancient history, and we'll move on
to some more modern stuff after a quick break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Um. So,
(12:54):
so we we divided up the ancient and the kind
of modern history like that, because, as it turns out,
nothing really happened, um in the history of of sour
dough bread for you know, a few millennia right until
the rediscovery of Brewers East around the four six hundred.
In various parts of Europe doing different stuff at different times. Um.
(13:16):
Germany kind of figured it out first thanks to the
close relationship between brewing and baking in medieval monasteries. And uh.
Then in seventeenth century France, they found that the addition
of brewers east made a softer, fluffier bread than the
then usual pain brie, which they called. Yeah, the new
(13:38):
the new fancy one with the brewers east was called
that other thing that Annie just said that one. Um.
It was also around this time that um hell Anthony
van Lelon leland Hook. Mm hmmm, I saw it both
leland Hook and leond Hook, so I'm not sure which
(14:02):
one it should be. I'm sorry, Dutch. Uh. This dude,
he developed microscopic lenses that allowed him to observe stuff
like bacteria and yeast, these these tiny, uh, single cellular organisms. Um.
He didn't realize that they were alive at the time,
but um, but people did begin to realize due to
due to this kind of research that this yeast stuff
(14:23):
was what made fermentation work. And also apparently there was
a hole to do in French parliament about the health
of brewers. Yes, after doctors from the Paris University concluded
used to be detrimental, mainly because one it was bitter
and to the fact rotting water and barley was involved
in this bitterness. So brewers yeast was outlawed in sixteen
(14:45):
sixty eight, but two years later in sixteen seventy, it
was mostly reversed and brewersies could once again be used
in bread making in combination with sour dough. A written
recipe from this time called for feeding and rising your
sour dough starter florita times two to three. Sour dough
starters was the norm at this point in time. Huh,
that's that's a lot of that's a lot of work, yes, um.
(15:09):
And the replacement of millstones and mills with steel rollers
in seventeen hundreds made the flower refining process cheaper and
helped shift bread from something that most people made at
home to something more people, especially workers, preferred to buy.
Um and this the the early bit of the Industrial
Revolution was the point around which bread baking really started
(15:31):
moving out of the home and into commercial bakeries and
in cities anyway, in a widespread kind of way. And
in eighteen forty in Austrian baker based in France discovered
how to make bread without sour dough using only yeast
fermentation called poolish. At the time, bakers were still getting
their yeast cultures from brewers, and soon after, in eighteen
(15:54):
fifty four, a patent for manufacturing powdered yeast was issued,
and by eight seventy to France had opened their first
factory of grain fermented yeast that was more consistent and
had a longer shelf life, which, as you would guess,
hit the saradough industry. Pretty hard. Bread baking using the
Polish method have been fairly common by eighteen eighty five,
(16:17):
and Sarato bread became known as French bread. Yes, Polish method, Yeah,
using Polish polish right. Yes. It's also around this time
that the American gold Rush was underway and prospectors in
San Francisco bread was becoming a thing. But we will
come back to that in a second. Yes. In the meanwhile,
(16:39):
Also around this this eighteen stone time, um, there was
a weird resurgence of the idea that leavened bread is
bad for you. Um. This time started in America. Um,
you know, is Baker's east toxic? Is anything associated with
beer terrible? Are sour things? On Good News at eleven um.
In In eight fifty two, a popular cookbook called Directions
(17:02):
for Cookery and its various branches decreed all bread that
is sour heavy or ill baked is not only unpalatable,
but extremely unwholesome and should never be eaten. These accidents
so frequently happen when bread is made at home by careless, unpracticed,
or incompetent persons. Strong fresh yeast from the brewery should
(17:23):
always be used in preference to any others. Wow, those
are some strong words. I feel insulted personally, I know right,
and like sour dough is delicious, and shut your face
man incompetent unpalatable, like they have a word goodness this person. Meanwhile,
(17:45):
in eighteen fifty seven, uh Louis Pasteur published his initial
findings about how yeast is is actually a living organism
and that colonies of it must be alive in order
to make fermentation happen, which is true because dead yeast
doesn't do a whole lot for you know. Um. This
did not help the freak out that some people were
(18:06):
experiencing about leavened bread. Um. However, in the long run,
everyone calmed down and and this the science let people
select the best yeasts and and the best treatments for
them in order to make better bread products. Um today
strains of this very yeast that that Louis was working with.
Sacro Mices Sarah visier um are are bread especially for
(18:28):
quick growth in in commercial baker's East right, And speaking
of commercials bakers East in the nineteenth century, a combination
of the development of commercial bakers East and in Europe,
specifically regulations preventing long hours or working at night, meant
that sourdough lost even more ground. Two breads that rose
(18:49):
more quickly and consistently like the Begetts. People still baked
in home, yes, and families still passed their starter cultures
on in la jocks and an exception up to this
was in northern Europe, where rye bread was popular and
sour dough worked as a leavening agent, where bakers East
(19:10):
did not, because rye doesn't have enough gluten to become
fluffy with East alone. In nineteen sixty four, bread expert
Raymond Calvel wrote, sour dough breadmaking does not exist any wow,
m you have dire things to say about sour dough.
I know, not mince words. It wasn't until the nineteen
(19:36):
eighties that it would have a comeback to due to
a demand for a higher bread quality, and also because
in the nineteen seventies a dry sour dough entered the
market pretty quickly, sailing economically passed sour do starter cultures.
This allowed sour dough to go from being a semi
heart to find ish artisanal bread to something more widespread
(19:57):
and commercially available, and in nine teen ninety three France
and the UK issued regulations defining sour dough bread regulations
I love them. Yes, rectipulations like the bread must have
a potential maximum pH of four point three and the
scetic acid content must be at least nine hundred parts
per million UM. Germany had a lot of differentiating between
(20:19):
the more labor intensive starter culture sour dough bread and
sour dough is made using giant sard. This kind of
reminds me of Champagne and how ye specific they are
with what it is. Yeah, it's great all of that.
Um Scientists have worked to identify both the natural strains
of yeast and bacteria that makes sourdough happen, and also
(20:40):
new strains that could be awesome. There's dizzy only extensive
research into these critters and their interactions. Um. More than
twenty species of common yeasts and fifty species of common
lactic acid bacteria have been identified in different sour dough
starters around the world. That's beautiful. It is also beautiful
(21:00):
is the bit that we skipped over about the San
Franciscan history of sour dough specifically, And we'll get to
that right after a quick word. 'm our sponsor and
we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So earlier we mentioned the
(21:24):
Gold Rush and San Francisco sour dough, which you might
have heard that the town is famous for. Yeah, I
have to admit when I think of sour dough, I
think of San Francisco. Oh, I think of my belly.
I don't know anyway, um uh. Some some bakeries in
San Francisco, as we said earlier, claimed that they have
kept their starters alive in bold and one hundred years.
(21:46):
But to trace the city's history of sour dough, we
have to go to Mexico. Oh yep. When when gold
was discovered in the American River in northern California in
eighteen forty eight, um, it kicked off the Great Gold
Rush of eighteen forty nine. This is not in Mexico yet. Um.
(22:06):
But it wasn't only rubs with no mining knowledge who
were hoping to get rich quick who flooded into San
Francisco at the time. Um. Gold miners also came up
from Mexico and Texas. And meanwhile, a whole bunch of
French colonials had taken up residents in Mexico before the
republic's independence from Spain in the eighteen twenties, and those
French kids brought the tradition of sour dough bread with
(22:28):
them to Mexico. This is great, yeah, um. Side note, Uh,
there's a story from the nineteen thirties to forties about
the quality of of Mexican sour dough. Phil Harris, who
was the band leader and a performer on the Jack
Benny Program, famous radio show television show. Um uh, supposedly
(22:49):
got his sour dough from this bakery in Tijuana that
he just loved. It was the only place that he
would buy his sour dough bread. Um right up until
on a return trip he was stuffed by customs agents
who slashed open all of his sour dough loaves looking
for As the article I found the story and put
it quote contraband often associated with musicians. Mm hmm. I
(23:13):
wonder what that could be. Uh, No one knows. Cocaine.
Um Okay, anyway, I'm back back to the early early
to mid eighteen hundreds. UM. So, through through these French colonialists,
sour dough spread throughout certain parts of the Southwest, and
so when Mexican and Texan miners came up to northern
(23:36):
California during the Gold Rush, they in turn brought it
there with them. Um. And they shared the starters and
in the method with the other miners there. They did
keep a pot of starter or a little ball of
starter dough with them wherever they camped and baked sour
dough bread, biscuits or flapjacks in their Dutch ovens or
iron skillets over campfires. Mm hmmm hmm. One of the
(23:58):
people who would obtain some of the sour dough starter
was Isidore Bowden, French immigrant from a long line of baker's.
He he really dug this starter and started using it
in his bread's when he opened the Boaden Bakery in
eighteen forty nine, which is sometimes hailed as the first
sour dough bakery in the area. There's a little bit
of contention there. The owners of Colombo Baking Company across
(24:20):
the bay in Oakland say they were the first people
making sour dough um at any rate, at least a
dozen French bread as they were called bakeries that we're
selling sour dough, which was being called French bread still
in some places. UM. What would open in the area
by eighteen fifty four a dozen among the like sixty
three total bakeries that the city hosted suddenly by then
(24:43):
because gold Rush super wild um and sour dough's popularity
with the mining population would ensure its continued salem even
through all of the big baker's yeast trends that we
were talking about UM in the coming decades. There's a
there's a story about Budden's Bakery during the big quake
of nineteen o six in San Francisco and and the
(25:04):
fires that spread in its aftermath. Budden's widow, Louise saved
this this family starter by throwing some of it in
a wooden bucket before she fled. I love that. Yeah,
the bakery is still open today. You can go check
it out and argue with my pronunciation of its name.
I went there when I went to visit my little mother.
Oh man, I've never been. It was so good. All
(25:28):
the sour doughs. Yeah, oh now I want it, Okay.
San Francisco was like baking tour for Annie. I went.
I woke up like four am to hit all the bakeries.
They sold out of things. Oh man, I think I
missed that entirely. I think I was on like a fish.
Every time I'm in California, I'm like sushi and avocados
(25:49):
them in my face. Maybe next time. A lot of
good bakeries there. Oh, I believe you. But but back
to the past. Yes. During the during the Klondike Gold
Rush of the eighteen nineties, uh miners from northern California
headed north and brought sour dough with them again um
and and they brought it with them so characteristically that
(26:11):
a nickname for these prospectors was the sour doughs. Um.
Some stories that the nickname came from their tendency to
to keep their starter literally on their person, like using
their body heat to maintain the culture in the freezing weather.
Uh Ruth Almon wrote in a whole book dedicated to
this topic. That quote, a true Alaskan sour dough would
(26:34):
as soon spend a year in the hills without his
rifle as to tough it through without his bubbling sour
dough pot. That's so great, I know. Starting around ninete,
a couple of microbiologists set out to catalog the yeasts
and bacteria that makes San Francisco sour doughs so special.
(26:54):
They found that the yeast most usually happening in San
Francisco bread is Candita millarry Millery maybe either one, And
they identified a new species of lactic acid bacteria called
lacto Bacsillus san Francis census. Yeah, San Francisco, right, your
(27:17):
bacteria famous? Uh. The yeast is is particularly tolerant of
acids and doesn't eat maltose at, a type of sugar
which the bacteria needs to live. Lactobacillus sanci census is
not unique to San Francisco, though um it has since
been identified in sour doughs around the world. Wow, it's
getting around, travelin going places. It was first identified in
(27:41):
San Francisco. It's not it's not necessarily native to their um. Also,
in case you had no idea, like me, Um that
the mascot of San Francisco forty niners, you know, gold
Rush of forty nine is still sour dough. Sam. It's
kind of like Prospector Dude. I don't I don't know
if that he has a pail and it has sour
(28:01):
dough bread in it. Oh my god, I hope he
just throws loaves of bread at people. I would go.
I would go to definitely go to that game. I
would just have like a bucket like in a a Marti
grad parade, but just reads. That's so much better than feeds.
All right, So that's a world retour of sour dough history.
(28:26):
Oh yeah, Yeah. There's a lot of topics that we
didn't go into that are kind of glancing through that.
A lot of stuff about Yeaston and other things, um,
that we will have to cover during other episodes because
it's super fascinating and it's so much, it's so much.
There's a lot. Oh my gosh. Well, now let's talk
about if you want to make like your own sour dough,
(28:46):
because it's it's really easy to start at starter culture
in theory. Um. A friend gave me a starter culture
in college, but I forgot to feed it, and it
died before I used to in anything. And also I've
never admitted this to her, so we'll see if she listens.
Get an angry email. Um, so much for friendship bread.
(29:10):
It's also called friendship bread sometimes. By the way, if
if you had never heard that, it's called friendship bread
because you can share your starter with a friend, and
hopefully you're a better friend than I. I let us,
I let us start a culture die once too. It
is really sad. I've heard it compared to like pets
or house plants. Oh no, you gotta keep it alive. Um.
(29:35):
So hopefully if you're better at it than Lauren and
I apparently, or if you live in Stockholm where they
have sour dough hotels, and well, how sit your starter
for three dollars a day? It's nothing that's so crazy.
I love that there's a hotel. Um, and you want
to try your hand at making sardo, here's what she
(29:57):
would do. You just mix equal parts flour and water,
like one cup each, maybe a pinch of sugar. Um,
put them in a clear bowl. Some people also had
a pinch of salt. There you go. You mix them
together if you want to. You can also add a
packet of dry yeast to to to get things started,
(30:18):
but you don't have to, like like if you if
you leave it alone, it will hypothetically catch wild yeast
that's just hanging out in the air around you, and
and wild lacto lacto v Exilus bacteria of some kind
or another. Um. But yeah, So so you just just
mix the stuff together in a in a clear bowl,
clear so that you can kind of really see what's
(30:39):
going on in there, and cover it with a clean
cloth like a dish towel, and just let it hang
out room temperature for a few days. Uh, stir it
once or twice a day, and feeded a couple of
tablespoons each of flower and water every day. I know
these are all really precise directions, but that's I'm kind
of combining a number of a number of theories that
I saw about how best to do this. I agree.
(31:00):
I think I think a lot of it are in instructions,
and I think I think a lot of people are
just like, try it and see what works for you
in your environment. Uh. Yeah, I saw someone used uh
she said she used yogurt to get the bacteria in there. Sure, Yeah,
(31:20):
I bet that would that would sure do it. I
kind of love that you use in general sour dough recipes. Feeding. Yeah,
it does sound like a creature. It's a pet. Yeah,
it's it's a delicious pet. Sometimes you put in the
oven and bake. Oh that sounds there. Put my pet
(31:41):
the oven. Oh you're not putting all of your pet
in the oven, just part of it. I'm getting attached
to it, like you're a hypothetical starter. I don't even
have so um, so you'll know. You'll know it's like done,
um when it's developed a froth on the top and
that characteristic um kind of kind of good sour smell.
(32:02):
And once that happens, you can PLoP. You can just
PLoP it in a jar and store it in the
fridge to slow the growth of the yeast. Just just
cover cover it loosely and uh, that's basically it. You
you want to feed it a little more flour and
water once a week. Um. If you're keeping it, you
can also keep it out if you want to. Uh.
(32:23):
I think, especially here in America, people are really really
keen on keeping things in the refrigerator. But you can
hypothetically keep it out just room temperature if you want to,
if you do feed it every day. Okay, that's where
I went wrong. Yeah, I did not refrigerate mine. Okay, okay, yeah,
if you refrigerated, feeded about once a week. Um, and
as the container gets full, you can just like take
a lump out and throw it out. Sorry, that unlucky
(32:46):
arm of the starter culture. Now it's just going to
grow in the garbage. Can I mean it would? I
mean I actually maybe lucky arm of the of the
yeast because it's not getting baked. Ever, that's true. That
so yeah, that's that's that's about it. Um. I want
to go home and try this. Now I've never tried
it before. Yeah, I've been looking at recipes to try. Uh.
(33:07):
I want to see what I would get if I
if I don't add anything in if I just do
the pure flower water sugar salt recipe, and how long
does it take? I don't know, experiment. I need to
set up a go pro. Oh I wonder if I
could borrow a GoPro yeah and do it time laps.
And if you do, I mean, if you do, you
could in theory keep it decades, like we said at
(33:28):
the beginning. So if anyone tries it out, let us know. Yeah. Yeah,
if you have your own family recipe, let us know,
yes please. Uh. And like most things, there are so
many variations. Oh yeah of this. You can also buy
Sara dog cultures from around the world from sites like
sour Doughs International. They I was looking at it earlier,
(33:52):
and uh, there was one on there called Tasmanian Devil.
It's from Australia, and it was like this wildly make
any bread more interesting? It was. I would recommend just
going to look at the yeast strains pretty affordable to um.
Also sour doughs and just for bread, which kind of
(34:13):
mentioned with the prospectors. But you can use it in biscuits, pancakes,
regular cakes, all kinds of stuff to add flavor. Yeah yeah, um.
And there are so many variations of like strains of
sour dough that North Carolina State biologists robbed Dunn started
the sour Dough Project in my favorite fact of the
episode where he and some fellow researchers are asking home
(34:35):
bakers to submit their starters for DNA sequencing, h and
enzyme level testing and other biochemistry markers. That's so cool,
I know, I was so happy reading this. They want
to know things like if feeding a starter water versus
milk makes a difference, the impact of the climate, the
impact of the baker. Yeah, yeah, supposedly. Um. I read
(35:01):
somewhere that the theory is that any of the lacto
lactic acid bacteria they get into your starter dough come
from your hands. Yes, And they think that there might
be a difference between male and female bakers. What yeah,
And there in the summer. This summer summer seen, the
(35:24):
Sour Dough Project is planning a sour dough bake off
with twenty different bakers and twenty different starters. DNA sequenced
the starters baked sunbread and compare the results. I cannot
tell you how excited I was reading about this, and
I was already planning on going to such a joyous
occasion in the name of science. But it's in bel Oh, Hey, boss,
(35:46):
do you want to you want to send us to Belgium?
Please come on for science. I know I hope that
they that somehow the Sour Dough Project hears about this
and they're like, we gotta we gotta fund these girls
to come with this. We should get in touch with them.
We should you know. I mean we can still. I'm
we're both compact. We could probably fit in someone's suitcase.
(36:07):
I am willing to travel via suitcase if I can.
In the name of sour dough, all those kinds of
sour dough. And the final note on that I will
leave you with is that the questionnaire for when you
submit your starter is adorable, so cute makes it really
does make your starter sound like a pit that's sour
(36:30):
dough project. You can look it up, yes, and I
think that's that's sour dough. That's in a in a
in a very in a very compact ball of bread.
Oh stuff sounds so appetising, I know. However, we do
(36:52):
have some lovely listener mail for you. Yes, so you do.
After our Honey episodes, Carly wrote in with this be fact.
I'm a bit of a bee enthusiast and one of
those aspiring beekeepers you gave a shout out to in
the beginning of the episode, and I just wanted to
share one of my favorite trivia bits about bees, how
(37:13):
they mate. This This side note is also something that
that Annie and I we got to talk to one
of those be scientists about about all this there's a video.
It might actually be up when you're listening to this
on on Amazon Prime. Yeah, so check that out. But okay,
but back to Carly, uh, because this is so metal um. Essentially,
what happens is the new virgin queen takes off on
(37:36):
her maiden flight. All the drones follow in a swarm.
The drones take turns trying to u stick her with
their manhood located where a worker bees stinger would be.
The successful drone, after impregnating her, literally ejects his genitalia
out of his body, after which he falls to the
(37:57):
ground dead. Yeah, and all of this happens in flight.
The more I dive in into entomology, the more convinced
I am that the insect world has a vendetta against
their male population. Additionally, after all of a sudden done,
any drones remaining in the hive are kicked out come
autumn by the female worker bees and are left to
(38:18):
die in the frigid wilderness because there's literally no use
for them. After the queen is pregnant, que Kanye is heartless.
These are so fascinating, Lauren and I could talk forever
about these. I yeah, it was. It was a struggle
to get that video episode down from what what like
(38:40):
like an hour and a half, it's it's like fifteen
minutes now. And originally I mean it's about Honey, but
there was so much cool b information that it became
Honey and Bees. And I had to face a difficult
choice as an editor, is like, should we focus on
honey or should we just leave it all this awesome
(39:01):
because there's so much awesome be stuff it is. Everyone
had such great things to say about bees. Um U,
that's that's not our only listener mail for the day. No,
um we have too from our Fried Chicken episode. First,
a short one from Elaine. I truly enjoyed your Fried
Chicken episode. I have spent many years in Japan, and
(39:22):
I thought y'all would like to know about their interesting
and misinformed Christmas Fried Chicken tradition. KFC and Japan touted
themselves as the must have centerpiece for an American Christmas dinner.
Look it up. It's quite funny. Yes, I had heard
a little bit about Japan's affinity for KFC. It is
(39:43):
quite funny and you should look it up. And Chris
wrote in with something that I have been meaning to
circle back to uh. He wrote, during your Fried Chicken episode,
one of you mentioned National Hot Chicken with the aside
that you weren't sure if they it really was a thing.
Despite the major chains attempting to destroy it with mediocre knockoffs,
(40:06):
Nashville Hot Chicken is absolutely a thing, complete with its
own origin story and festival origin story. Yes, the legend
around Nashville Hot Chicken is that it originated when a
lady named Andre Prince got mad at her husband, who
came home drunk and loudly demanded she cook him supper.
To get back at him, she fried chicken with a
massive dose of hot pepper, meaning to burn his mouth instead.
(40:29):
The husband loved it, and friends soon started asking Prince
to cook her quote hot chicken for parties and gatherings. Today,
there is even a Nashville Hot Chicken Festival held on
fourth of July and begun by a former Nashville mayor
who loved the stuff. You want to start a fight
in Music City, the quickest way to do it is
to plant your flag on one of the three major
(40:51):
authentic hot chicken purveyors. These are Princes, the original Bolton's,
which also serves fish with the super hot season and
Hattie B's the quote upscale newcomer mentioning a certain k
why Colonel's version will get you the equivalent of that
New York City hill on the old BBQ Sauce commercial.
(41:13):
And I wanted to mention this because this came up
in my physical therapy office when I was talking about
my research and they were like, he didn't talk about
and they were saying that there was cheating involved, that
he was coming back late because he was cheating. Anyway,
this is great, I know. I um, I can't believe
(41:34):
we didn't run across this either. Yeah. I did recently
try Hattie Bees Yeah, yeah, and it was really good.
I hope that doesn't get me any hate mail. And
I haven't tried the other two, so I can't make
an inform. Yeah, you can't compare. It's not a it's
not a it's not one is the best. It's just
that one was okay, right, Yeah, so defensive, were both
(41:54):
very scared. I don't don't don't want, don't want anyone
to come in all like New York City. I really
don't want that. And final listener thing we got, we
got a gift in the mail. We got a physical
piece of listener man lovely. Yeah. It was a thank
you note UM from Michelle from Michelle out of Louisville, Kentucky.
(42:17):
That's how my Kentucky friends say it is pronounced. And
she sent us UM. She missed some some some Derby
and Derby glasses, Uli, Derby glasses. It's lovely. Thank you
so much. Yeah, there's there's a there's a giant list
of the all the horse names um from winners from
previous years on the back and oh I love them,
(42:39):
I know, yes, just right my day right, yeah, so
so thank you so much to to Michelle for for
for listening and writing in and sending sending us lovely things. Yes,
and thank you to Chris and Elaine and Carly for
the letters, and to all of you who have been
getting in touch with us. If you would like to
do so. There are several news through which you can Yes.
(43:01):
One is by email at food stuff at Hastaff Works
dot com. Huh. We also have a fancy Facebook page,
like twenty seven of you have liked it. It's great,
I know. That's at food stuff hs W. We're also
on Twitter at food stuff HSW and on Instagram at
food stuff. Um, yeah, we try to post there. Sometimes
(43:24):
there's there's a lot of things going on y'all. Um,
but yeah, we we take goofy videos and pictures of
ourselves and other stuff that's going on in our lives.
We we've been, we've been uh doing a lot of
little side video projects for for the show, and um,
those are going to be showing up on on Facebook
and Instagram and Twitter and those those longer form things
(43:45):
are going to be on Amazon Video. Yes, and it's
free for everyone. Yes, yeah, I mean it's technically Amazon Prime,
but it's yes, free to view. Yes, even if you
don't have Prime, right, you'll get an AD but that's okay, Yes, yeah,
Prime at free. Yeah. So yeah, that's that's it for
the show today. Thank you for listening, and we hope
(44:06):
that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren Volgavon and
I'm an Eries and our topic for today is sour dough. Bread. Yes,
sour dough the bread. I don't know what else it
would be, but I'm sure something humans are real creative
and and why sour dough in particular. Well, as it
turns out, bread is not a small topic of human history.
(00:29):
In fact, it is an enormous topic. It is a
very large undertaking just to do sour dough. So not
to have a tin plus our episode, we're gonna like
look at different types of bread and today um and
bread on top of having information, uh there, there's it's
(00:52):
so important to so many different cultures. Oh yeah, give
us a stay or daily bread or all the idioms
um like to earn his bread, or even the etymology
of words like companion, which is a combo of two
Latin words meaning someone you'll share your bread with all
the pan in it. I bet. Oh my goodness, yeah,
I didn't realize. And now I'm like, I'll share my
(01:14):
bread with you Laura's Oh I would share my bread
with you Annie. Oh okay. I also, oh this is
this is another one that made me really hungry. Um,
sour dough might be my favorite type of bread. Sour
dough is delicious. Whenever my mom baked sour dough, I
would smell at my room and I knew it was
going to be a very special special night. Ah. My
(01:34):
my mom would make would make a non non sour
dough bread that was always a really good day as well.
But Uh, sour dough, as the name suggests, is sour bread,
and it involves two things that we wind up talking
about a lot here on food stuff, yeast and yeast's
fermentation of stuff. Exactly. Basically, if you leave some wheat,
(01:56):
flour and water or a lump of unbaked dough out
naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria, while yeast get up in there,
they get a fermentation party started, and when you add
more flour and water to that starter, you can make bread. Uh.
The yeast in sour dough or any bread really has
enzymes that break some of flowers starches down into sugars
(02:18):
and um. The yeast, which are you know, single celled fungi,
eat some of those sugars and excrete carbon dioxide and
alcohol fermentation. Except here the alcohol is really just a
just a flavoring agent. It helps break down other molecules
in the flour that produce all of the amazing flavors
and the smells that you get in bread. All of
those aromatics, um and the carbon dioxide gas is what
(02:41):
will make the bread rise, assuming that you've needed and
rested the dough so that it's remaining. Starch molecules are
are glutinous a k a Like chainey and stretchy rather
than just like flir. Yeah, you don't want flour in
your bread. Are generally sounds like something you want to
always avoid the flour. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the lactic acid bacteria
(03:07):
and you'll remember those from our yogurt episode. Yes, yes,
they are also eating some of those sugars and excreting
a up lactic acid. More bacteria poo Lauren's favorite things. Yes,
it makes everything better here. It produces the acidity that
gives sour dough that distinctive taste, although generally speaking, a
(03:27):
sour dough does not have to be sour, just has
to be made using wild yeasts and bacteria mh. By
the way, the longer that you let a sour dough starter,
you know that the flour and water mix or the
or the dough lump kind of sit out that the
more flavors should develop over time, right, because you give
them bacteria more time to do its more time learning.
(03:48):
Yes um. According to Edwoods Worlds sour doughs from antiquity
authentic recipes from modern baker's quote, a true our dough
is nothing more than flour and water with wild yeast
to make it rise and special bacteria to provide the flavor.
Uh bonus. As in yogurt, the lactic acid produced by
(04:10):
the bacteria and and the alcohol produced by the yeast
prevent the growth of harmful bacteria in your sitting starter
Um extra bonus. You can save a lump of your dough,
feed it more flour and water, and use it to
make more other leavened bread later on. Just like with yogurt,
This culture will last for you know, as long as
(04:33):
you keep it alive. How long could that be? I
I read claims of centuries and they've been unable to
prove it. But yeah, that's why I'm That's why I'm
going on the safe side. And the same day there's
there's at least one San Francisco bakery that claims over
a hundred years. Ah, I suspect I know which one
that is, and I think we're going to be talking
(04:55):
about them. We will, indeed, But before we get there,
let's let's look at the history. Yeah, a little a
little bit deeper in the history than a hundred years ago.
Here we go. History. Bread has been around for like ever.
The oldest loaf of bread discovered at this point, UM
was in Switzerland, going back todd or maybe BC history. Yeah,
(05:21):
both dates. Yeah, I think I saw just rates somewhere
in that range. Yeah, wall paintings and bread romains, which
is not the best put it, but pretty much the
only way I could think of putting it. UM indicate
that the ancient Egyptians were using sour dough starters to
(05:42):
bake leavened bread, possibly going back up to five thousand
years and kind of like honey, it could go back
even further prewritten words, because it's the thing that just happens,
and because of that, it was probably discovered by accident
when some unsuspecting left out dough encountered some wild and
it's usually of the genus Zaccar mices candida. Yes, I
(06:06):
hope I got close on that. Pronunciation. I don't know,
I think that that that was spot on. Yes, yeah,
um so yeah yeah, like a like early um fermentation
of of beer and wine and stuff. Yeah, this is
just stuff that was happening in nature. Um. So it's
really hard to pinpoint an original date. No one is like, hey, guys,
(06:27):
I was the one who discovered the sour dough. Although
whoever it was who discovered that this was a thing,
it was almost certainly related to beer brewing. Yes, um,
because the discovery of beer entailed a lot of experimenting
with starter cultures and baking and beer brewing often happened
(06:49):
in the same space, so it could have gone down
that way. Or according to Lawn Walter's Old West Baking Book,
baker got the idea to add either one of the
beers arder cultures or beer barm to flower and water
to see what happened. Barn, by the way, is the
disgummy kind of foam that develops on top of stuff
while it's fermenting. Yes, this also tripped us up in
(07:12):
our six hundred year old meat recipe. Yeah, I had
no idea what that was. I was, also, to be
fair quite drunk. Um. There was a lot of meat.
Very early in the morning there was It was ten am, y'all.
I hadn't had breakfast, and this very nice man brought
us ten samples of meat, and he kept pouring large
sample anyway. It was lovely, it was. But I thought
the barb was just the funniest word I had ever
heard in my entire life at that juncture. It's a
(07:33):
pretty good one. Back to the beer beers, they tried
out a bunch of different cultures and discovered that They
tried him out with the bread, and they discovered that
some made lighter, fluffier breads. And they take a piece
of that dough from a bat they liked, and then
add some flower to keep it alive. Ak a sour
(07:53):
dough starter And a quote from Lawn Walter's book. I
really liked quote. Each starter has its own characteristic taste
and smell. Many older starters are guarded by their owners
as if they were a key to heaven. They're passed
on generation to generation, and really, share 's not so
friendly bread. No, it's a different time, still kind of happened,
(08:16):
and people give these family starters fun names like Clint Eastwood.
I enjoyed looking through those names, there's yeah, there's there's
there's good lists out there. Um. And of course folks
at this time had no idea, oh why this was happening.
You know, they just knew that if they took a
little bit of this one thing that they made turned
out good and they put it into their next batch,
that next batch turned out good too, right, And going
(08:39):
back to a mead guy briefly for a second, corn
to him, that's why we call spirit spirits because they
didn't know what was happening that was causing the fermentation
in the alcohol, and it was kind of like you're
praying to the spirits. Yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, the
soul of the beer, please make my beer beer and
not just rotten barley water, right, because one thing is
(09:01):
better than that other thing. I easially want you to
help me out on this. I hope that that is true.
But it's a fun story. Nonetheless, Yes, thank you, thank
you to Justin of Monks Mead for that, for that
lovely story. Yes, thank you Justin. So anyway, bread making
and sour dough spread from ancient Egypt to ancient Greece
sometime around eight hundred BC, and at the time it
(09:24):
was a luxury only for the wealthy, and the baking
of it was left completely to women. This was a
fact that everywhere I read they felt compelled to include
a beer. At the time, too, I think was lady work.
So it wasn't until eight hundred BC that written records
of bakeries offering bread for sale pop up an ancient Greece.
(09:44):
There we go, and then after contact with Greece, sour
do traveled to ancient Rome, where improved methods of needing
and baking made bread more widely available, and in one
six b C. Cato the Elder detailed several different types
of bread. Greece also spread sour dough to France sometime
around the fourth century BC. Greeks living in France noticed
(10:06):
that if you replaced the water and bread dough with
the foam from a beer like fermented drink, it produced
a lighter, fluffier bread, and the cloudier the loquid, the
better the end product. Due to Paris's proximity to the
major we producing area of the region, it produced some
of the country's first bakers, and at the time all
the bread they were baking was sour dough, both because
(10:27):
it was all they knew fermentation wise, and it was
cheaper because you didn't need any expensive salt thanks to
the acidity. Ah. Yeah, assault also helps break down molecules
in rising bread and in uh starters, making it more flavorful,
tasty stuff. And then one of our old friends, Pliny
the Elder, he talked about a lot of things. He
(10:50):
really did. He wrote in his seventies seven ce Ish
Encyclopedia Natural History that quote, Generally, however, they do not
heat it up at all, but only used the dough
kept over from the day before. Manifestly, it is natural
for sourness to make the dope ferment, and likewise that
people who live on fermented bread have weaker bodies, inasmuch
(11:12):
as in old days outstanding wholesomeness was ascribed to wheat,
the heavier it was. Okay. Yeah. He also claimed that
sara dough was better for health, which is truish due
to the good bacteria. I suppose. Yeah, there is a
teeny amount of research, teeny prttern research, not like Pliny res.
(11:38):
I wonder what research Planny was doing. I'm sure it
was fascinating. But according to a two thousand eight acted
diabetological study and a two thousand and eleven study out
of clinical gastro intrology and hepatology in Italy indicating that
due to the lower amount of gluten content and sour
dough bread, it may be more tolerable for people with
(11:58):
stilly exercise. Small sample sizes though, um it does produce
a smaller search of glucoast than most other breads. Well
that's good news. Yeah so grain of salt, grain of salt.
It but the research does exist around the same time,
plenty time. Uh. Roman poet Juneo All wrote satire ten
(12:23):
or the famous and recently Hunger Games repopularized phrase Panama
senses our bread and circuses comes from. Okay, so that
takes care of the ancient history, and we'll move on
to some more modern stuff after a quick break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Um. So,
(12:54):
so we we divided up the ancient and the kind
of modern history like that, because, as it turns out,
nothing really happened, um in the history of of sour
dough bread for you know, a few millennia right until
the rediscovery of Brewers East around the four six hundred.
In various parts of Europe doing different stuff at different times. Um.
(13:16):
Germany kind of figured it out first thanks to the
close relationship between brewing and baking in medieval monasteries. And uh.
Then in seventeenth century France, they found that the addition
of brewers east made a softer, fluffier bread than the
then usual pain brie, which they called. Yeah, the new
(13:38):
the new fancy one with the brewers east was called
that other thing that Annie just said that one. Um.
It was also around this time that um hell Anthony
van Lelon leland Hook. Mm hmmm, I saw it both
leland Hook and leond Hook, so I'm not sure which
(14:02):
one it should be. I'm sorry, Dutch. Uh. This dude,
he developed microscopic lenses that allowed him to observe stuff
like bacteria and yeast, these these tiny, uh, single cellular organisms. Um.
He didn't realize that they were alive at the time,
but um, but people did begin to realize due to
due to this kind of research that this yeast stuff
(14:23):
was what made fermentation work. And also apparently there was
a hole to do in French parliament about the health
of brewers. Yes, after doctors from the Paris University concluded
used to be detrimental, mainly because one it was bitter
and to the fact rotting water and barley was involved
in this bitterness. So brewers yeast was outlawed in sixteen
(14:45):
sixty eight, but two years later in sixteen seventy, it
was mostly reversed and brewersies could once again be used
in bread making in combination with sour dough. A written
recipe from this time called for feeding and rising your
sour dough starter florita times two to three. Sour dough
starters was the norm at this point in time. Huh,
that's that's a lot of that's a lot of work, yes, um.
(15:09):
And the replacement of millstones and mills with steel rollers
in seventeen hundreds made the flower refining process cheaper and
helped shift bread from something that most people made at
home to something more people, especially workers, preferred to buy.
Um and this the the early bit of the Industrial
Revolution was the point around which bread baking really started
(15:31):
moving out of the home and into commercial bakeries and
in cities anyway, in a widespread kind of way. And
in eighteen forty in Austrian baker based in France discovered
how to make bread without sour dough using only yeast
fermentation called poolish. At the time, bakers were still getting
their yeast cultures from brewers, and soon after, in eighteen
(15:54):
fifty four, a patent for manufacturing powdered yeast was issued,
and by eight seventy to France had opened their first
factory of grain fermented yeast that was more consistent and
had a longer shelf life, which, as you would guess,
hit the saradough industry. Pretty hard. Bread baking using the
Polish method have been fairly common by eighteen eighty five,
(16:17):
and Sarato bread became known as French bread. Yes, Polish method, Yeah,
using Polish polish right. Yes. It's also around this time
that the American gold Rush was underway and prospectors in
San Francisco bread was becoming a thing. But we will
come back to that in a second. Yes. In the meanwhile,
(16:39):
Also around this this eighteen stone time, um, there was
a weird resurgence of the idea that leavened bread is
bad for you. Um. This time started in America. Um,
you know, is Baker's east toxic? Is anything associated with
beer terrible? Are sour things? On Good News at eleven um.
In In eight fifty two, a popular cookbook called Directions
(17:02):
for Cookery and its various branches decreed all bread that
is sour heavy or ill baked is not only unpalatable,
but extremely unwholesome and should never be eaten. These accidents
so frequently happen when bread is made at home by careless, unpracticed,
or incompetent persons. Strong fresh yeast from the brewery should
(17:23):
always be used in preference to any others. Wow, those
are some strong words. I feel insulted personally, I know right,
and like sour dough is delicious, and shut your face
man incompetent unpalatable, like they have a word goodness this person. Meanwhile,
(17:45):
in eighteen fifty seven, uh Louis Pasteur published his initial
findings about how yeast is is actually a living organism
and that colonies of it must be alive in order
to make fermentation happen, which is true because dead yeast
doesn't do a whole lot for you know. Um. This
did not help the freak out that some people were
(18:06):
experiencing about leavened bread. Um. However, in the long run,
everyone calmed down and and this the science let people
select the best yeasts and and the best treatments for
them in order to make better bread products. Um today
strains of this very yeast that that Louis was working with.
Sacro Mices Sarah visier um are are bread especially for
(18:28):
quick growth in in commercial baker's East right, And speaking
of commercials bakers East in the nineteenth century, a combination
of the development of commercial bakers East and in Europe,
specifically regulations preventing long hours or working at night, meant
that sourdough lost even more ground. Two breads that rose
(18:49):
more quickly and consistently like the Begetts. People still baked
in home, yes, and families still passed their starter cultures
on in la jocks and an exception up to this
was in northern Europe, where rye bread was popular and
sour dough worked as a leavening agent, where bakers East
(19:10):
did not, because rye doesn't have enough gluten to become
fluffy with East alone. In nineteen sixty four, bread expert
Raymond Calvel wrote, sour dough breadmaking does not exist any wow,
m you have dire things to say about sour dough.
I know, not mince words. It wasn't until the nineteen
(19:36):
eighties that it would have a comeback to due to
a demand for a higher bread quality, and also because
in the nineteen seventies a dry sour dough entered the
market pretty quickly, sailing economically passed sour do starter cultures.
This allowed sour dough to go from being a semi
heart to find ish artisanal bread to something more widespread
(19:57):
and commercially available, and in nine teen ninety three France
and the UK issued regulations defining sour dough bread regulations
I love them. Yes, rectipulations like the bread must have
a potential maximum pH of four point three and the
scetic acid content must be at least nine hundred parts
per million UM. Germany had a lot of differentiating between
(20:19):
the more labor intensive starter culture sour dough bread and
sour dough is made using giant sard. This kind of
reminds me of Champagne and how ye specific they are
with what it is. Yeah, it's great all of that.
Um Scientists have worked to identify both the natural strains
of yeast and bacteria that makes sourdough happen, and also
(20:40):
new strains that could be awesome. There's dizzy only extensive
research into these critters and their interactions. Um. More than
twenty species of common yeasts and fifty species of common
lactic acid bacteria have been identified in different sour dough
starters around the world. That's beautiful. It is also beautiful
(21:00):
is the bit that we skipped over about the San
Franciscan history of sour dough specifically, And we'll get to
that right after a quick word. 'm our sponsor and
we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So earlier we mentioned the
(21:24):
Gold Rush and San Francisco sour dough, which you might
have heard that the town is famous for. Yeah, I
have to admit when I think of sour dough, I
think of San Francisco. Oh, I think of my belly.
I don't know anyway, um uh. Some some bakeries in
San Francisco, as we said earlier, claimed that they have
kept their starters alive in bold and one hundred years.
(21:46):
But to trace the city's history of sour dough, we
have to go to Mexico. Oh yep. When when gold
was discovered in the American River in northern California in
eighteen forty eight, um, it kicked off the Great Gold
Rush of eighteen forty nine. This is not in Mexico yet. Um.
(22:06):
But it wasn't only rubs with no mining knowledge who
were hoping to get rich quick who flooded into San
Francisco at the time. Um. Gold miners also came up
from Mexico and Texas. And meanwhile, a whole bunch of
French colonials had taken up residents in Mexico before the
republic's independence from Spain in the eighteen twenties, and those
French kids brought the tradition of sour dough bread with
(22:28):
them to Mexico. This is great, yeah, um. Side note, Uh,
there's a story from the nineteen thirties to forties about
the quality of of Mexican sour dough. Phil Harris, who
was the band leader and a performer on the Jack
Benny Program, famous radio show television show. Um uh, supposedly
(22:49):
got his sour dough from this bakery in Tijuana that
he just loved. It was the only place that he
would buy his sour dough bread. Um right up until
on a return trip he was stuffed by customs agents
who slashed open all of his sour dough loaves looking
for As the article I found the story and put
it quote contraband often associated with musicians. Mm hmm. I
(23:13):
wonder what that could be. Uh, No one knows. Cocaine.
Um Okay, anyway, I'm back back to the early early
to mid eighteen hundreds. UM. So, through through these French colonialists,
sour dough spread throughout certain parts of the Southwest, and
so when Mexican and Texan miners came up to northern
(23:36):
California during the Gold Rush, they in turn brought it
there with them. Um. And they shared the starters and
in the method with the other miners there. They did
keep a pot of starter or a little ball of
starter dough with them wherever they camped and baked sour
dough bread, biscuits or flapjacks in their Dutch ovens or
iron skillets over campfires. Mm hmmm hmm. One of the
(23:58):
people who would obtain some of the sour dough starter
was Isidore Bowden, French immigrant from a long line of baker's.
He he really dug this starter and started using it
in his bread's when he opened the Boaden Bakery in
eighteen forty nine, which is sometimes hailed as the first
sour dough bakery in the area. There's a little bit
of contention there. The owners of Colombo Baking Company across
(24:20):
the bay in Oakland say they were the first people
making sour dough um at any rate, at least a
dozen French bread as they were called bakeries that we're
selling sour dough, which was being called French bread still
in some places. UM. What would open in the area
by eighteen fifty four a dozen among the like sixty
three total bakeries that the city hosted suddenly by then
(24:43):
because gold Rush super wild um and sour dough's popularity
with the mining population would ensure its continued salem even
through all of the big baker's yeast trends that we
were talking about UM in the coming decades. There's a
there's a story about Budden's Bakery during the big quake
of nineteen o six in San Francisco and and the
(25:04):
fires that spread in its aftermath. Budden's widow, Louise saved
this this family starter by throwing some of it in
a wooden bucket before she fled. I love that. Yeah,
the bakery is still open today. You can go check
it out and argue with my pronunciation of its name.
I went there when I went to visit my little mother.
Oh man, I've never been. It was so good. All
(25:28):
the sour doughs. Yeah, oh now I want it, Okay.
San Francisco was like baking tour for Annie. I went.
I woke up like four am to hit all the bakeries.
They sold out of things. Oh man, I think I
missed that entirely. I think I was on like a fish.
Every time I'm in California, I'm like sushi and avocados
(25:49):
them in my face. Maybe next time. A lot of
good bakeries there. Oh, I believe you. But but back
to the past. Yes. During the during the Klondike Gold
Rush of the eighteen nineties, uh miners from northern California
headed north and brought sour dough with them again um
and and they brought it with them so characteristically that
(26:11):
a nickname for these prospectors was the sour doughs. Um.
Some stories that the nickname came from their tendency to
to keep their starter literally on their person, like using
their body heat to maintain the culture in the freezing weather.
Uh Ruth Almon wrote in a whole book dedicated to
this topic. That quote, a true Alaskan sour dough would
(26:34):
as soon spend a year in the hills without his
rifle as to tough it through without his bubbling sour
dough pot. That's so great, I know. Starting around ninete,
a couple of microbiologists set out to catalog the yeasts
and bacteria that makes San Francisco sour doughs so special.
(26:54):
They found that the yeast most usually happening in San
Francisco bread is Candita millarry Millery maybe either one, And
they identified a new species of lactic acid bacteria called
lacto Bacsillus san Francis census. Yeah, San Francisco, right, your
(27:17):
bacteria famous? Uh. The yeast is is particularly tolerant of
acids and doesn't eat maltose at, a type of sugar
which the bacteria needs to live. Lactobacillus sanci census is
not unique to San Francisco, though um it has since
been identified in sour doughs around the world. Wow, it's
getting around, travelin going places. It was first identified in
(27:41):
San Francisco. It's not it's not necessarily native to their um. Also,
in case you had no idea, like me, Um that
the mascot of San Francisco forty niners, you know, gold
Rush of forty nine is still sour dough. Sam. It's
kind of like Prospector Dude. I don't I don't know
if that he has a pail and it has sour
(28:01):
dough bread in it. Oh my god, I hope he
just throws loaves of bread at people. I would go.
I would go to definitely go to that game. I
would just have like a bucket like in a a Marti
grad parade, but just reads. That's so much better than feeds.
All right, So that's a world retour of sour dough history.
(28:26):
Oh yeah, Yeah. There's a lot of topics that we
didn't go into that are kind of glancing through that.
A lot of stuff about Yeaston and other things, um,
that we will have to cover during other episodes because
it's super fascinating and it's so much, it's so much.
There's a lot. Oh my gosh. Well, now let's talk
about if you want to make like your own sour dough,
(28:46):
because it's it's really easy to start at starter culture
in theory. Um. A friend gave me a starter culture
in college, but I forgot to feed it, and it
died before I used to in anything. And also I've
never admitted this to her, so we'll see if she listens.
Get an angry email. Um, so much for friendship bread.
(29:10):
It's also called friendship bread sometimes. By the way, if
if you had never heard that, it's called friendship bread
because you can share your starter with a friend, and
hopefully you're a better friend than I. I let us,
I let us start a culture die once too. It
is really sad. I've heard it compared to like pets
or house plants. Oh no, you gotta keep it alive. Um.
(29:35):
So hopefully if you're better at it than Lauren and
I apparently, or if you live in Stockholm where they
have sour dough hotels, and well, how sit your starter
for three dollars a day? It's nothing that's so crazy.
I love that there's a hotel. Um, and you want
to try your hand at making sardo, here's what she
(29:57):
would do. You just mix equal parts flour and water,
like one cup each, maybe a pinch of sugar. Um,
put them in a clear bowl. Some people also had
a pinch of salt. There you go. You mix them
together if you want to. You can also add a
packet of dry yeast to to to get things started,
(30:18):
but you don't have to, like like if you if
you leave it alone, it will hypothetically catch wild yeast
that's just hanging out in the air around you, and
and wild lacto lacto v Exilus bacteria of some kind
or another. Um. But yeah, So so you just just
mix the stuff together in a in a clear bowl,
clear so that you can kind of really see what's
(30:39):
going on in there, and cover it with a clean
cloth like a dish towel, and just let it hang
out room temperature for a few days. Uh, stir it
once or twice a day, and feeded a couple of
tablespoons each of flower and water every day. I know
these are all really precise directions, but that's I'm kind
of combining a number of a number of theories that
I saw about how best to do this. I agree.
(31:00):
I think I think a lot of it are in instructions,
and I think I think a lot of people are
just like, try it and see what works for you
in your environment. Uh. Yeah, I saw someone used uh
she said she used yogurt to get the bacteria in there. Sure, Yeah,
(31:20):
I bet that would that would sure do it. I
kind of love that you use in general sour dough recipes. Feeding. Yeah,
it does sound like a creature. It's a pet. Yeah,
it's it's a delicious pet. Sometimes you put in the
oven and bake. Oh that sounds there. Put my pet
(31:41):
the oven. Oh you're not putting all of your pet
in the oven, just part of it. I'm getting attached
to it, like you're a hypothetical starter. I don't even
have so um, so you'll know. You'll know it's like done,
um when it's developed a froth on the top and
that characteristic um kind of kind of good sour smell.
(32:02):
And once that happens, you can PLoP. You can just
PLoP it in a jar and store it in the
fridge to slow the growth of the yeast. Just just
cover cover it loosely and uh, that's basically it. You
you want to feed it a little more flour and
water once a week. Um. If you're keeping it, you
can also keep it out if you want to. Uh.
(32:23):
I think, especially here in America, people are really really
keen on keeping things in the refrigerator. But you can
hypothetically keep it out just room temperature if you want to,
if you do feed it every day. Okay, that's where
I went wrong. Yeah, I did not refrigerate mine. Okay, okay, yeah,
if you refrigerated, feeded about once a week. Um, and
as the container gets full, you can just like take
a lump out and throw it out. Sorry, that unlucky
(32:46):
arm of the starter culture. Now it's just going to
grow in the garbage. Can I mean it would? I
mean I actually maybe lucky arm of the of the
yeast because it's not getting baked. Ever, that's true. That
so yeah, that's that's that's about it. Um. I want
to go home and try this. Now I've never tried
it before. Yeah, I've been looking at recipes to try. Uh.
(33:07):
I want to see what I would get if I
if I don't add anything in if I just do
the pure flower water sugar salt recipe, and how long
does it take? I don't know, experiment. I need to
set up a go pro. Oh I wonder if I
could borrow a GoPro yeah and do it time laps.
And if you do, I mean, if you do, you
could in theory keep it decades, like we said at
(33:28):
the beginning. So if anyone tries it out, let us know. Yeah. Yeah,
if you have your own family recipe, let us know,
yes please. Uh. And like most things, there are so
many variations. Oh yeah of this. You can also buy
Sara dog cultures from around the world from sites like
sour Doughs International. They I was looking at it earlier,
(33:52):
and uh, there was one on there called Tasmanian Devil.
It's from Australia, and it was like this wildly make
any bread more interesting? It was. I would recommend just
going to look at the yeast strains pretty affordable to um.
Also sour doughs and just for bread, which kind of
(34:13):
mentioned with the prospectors. But you can use it in biscuits, pancakes,
regular cakes, all kinds of stuff to add flavor. Yeah yeah, um.
And there are so many variations of like strains of
sour dough that North Carolina State biologists robbed Dunn started
the sour Dough Project in my favorite fact of the
episode where he and some fellow researchers are asking home
(34:35):
bakers to submit their starters for DNA sequencing, h and
enzyme level testing and other biochemistry markers. That's so cool,
I know, I was so happy reading this. They want
to know things like if feeding a starter water versus
milk makes a difference, the impact of the climate, the
impact of the baker. Yeah, yeah, supposedly. Um. I read
(35:01):
somewhere that the theory is that any of the lacto
lactic acid bacteria they get into your starter dough come
from your hands. Yes, And they think that there might
be a difference between male and female bakers. What yeah,
And there in the summer. This summer summer seen, the
(35:24):
Sour Dough Project is planning a sour dough bake off
with twenty different bakers and twenty different starters. DNA sequenced
the starters baked sunbread and compare the results. I cannot
tell you how excited I was reading about this, and
I was already planning on going to such a joyous
occasion in the name of science. But it's in bel Oh, Hey, boss,
(35:46):
do you want to you want to send us to Belgium?
Please come on for science. I know I hope that
they that somehow the Sour Dough Project hears about this
and they're like, we gotta we gotta fund these girls
to come with this. We should get in touch with them.
We should you know. I mean we can still. I'm
we're both compact. We could probably fit in someone's suitcase.
(36:07):
I am willing to travel via suitcase if I can.
In the name of sour dough, all those kinds of
sour dough. And the final note on that I will
leave you with is that the questionnaire for when you
submit your starter is adorable, so cute makes it really
does make your starter sound like a pit that's sour
(36:30):
dough project. You can look it up, yes, and I
think that's that's sour dough. That's in a in a
in a very in a very compact ball of bread.
Oh stuff sounds so appetising, I know. However, we do
(36:52):
have some lovely listener mail for you. Yes, so you do.
After our Honey episodes, Carly wrote in with this be fact.
I'm a bit of a bee enthusiast and one of
those aspiring beekeepers you gave a shout out to in
the beginning of the episode, and I just wanted to
share one of my favorite trivia bits about bees, how
(37:13):
they mate. This This side note is also something that
that Annie and I we got to talk to one
of those be scientists about about all this there's a video.
It might actually be up when you're listening to this
on on Amazon Prime. Yeah, so check that out. But okay,
but back to Carly, uh, because this is so metal um. Essentially,
what happens is the new virgin queen takes off on
(37:36):
her maiden flight. All the drones follow in a swarm.
The drones take turns trying to u stick her with
their manhood located where a worker bees stinger would be.
The successful drone, after impregnating her, literally ejects his genitalia
out of his body, after which he falls to the
(37:57):
ground dead. Yeah, and all of this happens in flight.
The more I dive in into entomology, the more convinced
I am that the insect world has a vendetta against
their male population. Additionally, after all of a sudden done,
any drones remaining in the hive are kicked out come
autumn by the female worker bees and are left to
(38:18):
die in the frigid wilderness because there's literally no use
for them. After the queen is pregnant, que Kanye is heartless.
These are so fascinating, Lauren and I could talk forever
about these. I yeah, it was. It was a struggle
to get that video episode down from what what like
(38:40):
like an hour and a half, it's it's like fifteen
minutes now. And originally I mean it's about Honey, but
there was so much cool b information that it became
Honey and Bees. And I had to face a difficult
choice as an editor, is like, should we focus on
honey or should we just leave it all this awesome
(39:01):
because there's so much awesome be stuff it is. Everyone
had such great things to say about bees. Um U,
that's that's not our only listener mail for the day. No,
um we have too from our Fried Chicken episode. First,
a short one from Elaine. I truly enjoyed your Fried
Chicken episode. I have spent many years in Japan, and
(39:22):
I thought y'all would like to know about their interesting
and misinformed Christmas Fried Chicken tradition. KFC and Japan touted
themselves as the must have centerpiece for an American Christmas dinner.
Look it up. It's quite funny. Yes, I had heard
a little bit about Japan's affinity for KFC. It is
(39:43):
quite funny and you should look it up. And Chris
wrote in with something that I have been meaning to
circle back to uh. He wrote, during your Fried Chicken episode,
one of you mentioned National Hot Chicken with the aside
that you weren't sure if they it really was a thing.
Despite the major chains attempting to destroy it with mediocre knockoffs,
(40:06):
Nashville Hot Chicken is absolutely a thing, complete with its
own origin story and festival origin story. Yes, the legend
around Nashville Hot Chicken is that it originated when a
lady named Andre Prince got mad at her husband, who
came home drunk and loudly demanded she cook him supper.
To get back at him, she fried chicken with a
massive dose of hot pepper, meaning to burn his mouth instead.
(40:29):
The husband loved it, and friends soon started asking Prince
to cook her quote hot chicken for parties and gatherings. Today,
there is even a Nashville Hot Chicken Festival held on
fourth of July and begun by a former Nashville mayor
who loved the stuff. You want to start a fight
in Music City, the quickest way to do it is
to plant your flag on one of the three major
(40:51):
authentic hot chicken purveyors. These are Princes, the original Bolton's,
which also serves fish with the super hot season and
Hattie B's the quote upscale newcomer mentioning a certain k
why Colonel's version will get you the equivalent of that
New York City hill on the old BBQ Sauce commercial.
(41:13):
And I wanted to mention this because this came up
in my physical therapy office when I was talking about
my research and they were like, he didn't talk about
and they were saying that there was cheating involved, that
he was coming back late because he was cheating. Anyway,
this is great, I know. I um, I can't believe
(41:34):
we didn't run across this either. Yeah. I did recently
try Hattie Bees Yeah, yeah, and it was really good.
I hope that doesn't get me any hate mail. And
I haven't tried the other two, so I can't make
an inform. Yeah, you can't compare. It's not a it's
not a it's not one is the best. It's just
that one was okay, right, Yeah, so defensive, were both
(41:54):
very scared. I don't don't don't want, don't want anyone
to come in all like New York City. I really
don't want that. And final listener thing we got, we
got a gift in the mail. We got a physical
piece of listener man lovely. Yeah. It was a thank
you note UM from Michelle from Michelle out of Louisville, Kentucky.
(42:17):
That's how my Kentucky friends say it is pronounced. And
she sent us UM. She missed some some some Derby
and Derby glasses, Uli, Derby glasses. It's lovely. Thank you
so much. Yeah, there's there's a there's a giant list
of the all the horse names um from winners from
previous years on the back and oh I love them,
(42:39):
I know, yes, just right my day right, yeah, so
so thank you so much to to Michelle for for
for listening and writing in and sending sending us lovely things. Yes,
and thank you to Chris and Elaine and Carly for
the letters, and to all of you who have been
getting in touch with us. If you would like to
do so. There are several news through which you can Yes.
(43:01):
One is by email at food stuff at Hastaff Works
dot com. Huh. We also have a fancy Facebook page,
like twenty seven of you have liked it. It's great,
I know. That's at food stuff hs W. We're also
on Twitter at food stuff HSW and on Instagram at
food stuff. Um, yeah, we try to post there. Sometimes
(43:24):
there's there's a lot of things going on y'all. Um,
but yeah, we we take goofy videos and pictures of
ourselves and other stuff that's going on in our lives.
We we've been, we've been uh doing a lot of
little side video projects for for the show, and um,
those are going to be showing up on on Facebook
and Instagram and Twitter and those those longer form things
(43:45):
are going to be on Amazon Video. Yes, and it's
free for everyone. Yes, yeah, I mean it's technically Amazon Prime,
but it's yes, free to view. Yes, even if you
don't have Prime, right, you'll get an AD but that's okay, Yes, yeah,
Prime at free. Yeah. So yeah, that's that's it for
the show today. Thank you for listening, and we hope
(44:06):
that lots more good things are coming your way.
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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