Sourdough is just bread of some sort that has been “soured” by wild yeasts. This happened naturally in the days of old when if you wanted bread to rise you had to wait for nature to do it because you could not just go down and get a packet from the store. You basically make up some bread dough and wait for it to rise (more than that and I will give you a link with details in a minute). For the dough to rise takes days because wild yeasts have to colonize the dough. Now these guys are not all nice and refined and pure so they provide that sour taste.

In the old days one had to do this, you then made new dough and took some of the old and mixed it in. Now the active wild yeasts will get going fast and you can make bread in one day. Since the starter is added to fresh dough it won’t be “that sour to taste” and the longer you let it go the more sour it will get, if you cooked the whole starter it would be VERY sour. When people used to make a ton of bread at home they would put a big starter into a batch let it rise then just take back out of the big batch the same amount they put in and use it again the next day and so on.

Here is the thing, this isn’t just some yuppy trend thing. That active wild yeast does things “bread yeast” can’t, including the following…

Pre-digesting starches, making the bread more easily digestible. lowering insulin response/improving glucose tolerance, protecting Vitamin B1 from the damage of the heat of baking, breaking down gluten, which may result in a bread that gluten-sensitive people can eat, activating phytase to hydrolyze (dissolve) the phytates, thus freeing up minerals such as zinc, iron, magnesium, copper and phosphorus.

This was your great grandmothers bread and bread for all of humanity until VERY recently. All those serfs in the middle ages that ate so much bread with out modern disease, ATE THIS. Basically wheat itself contains multiple toxins. The action of souring bread is effectively a fermentation of the bread. Rather than a fast acting yeast that just puts air in it like we use for most bread today. The yeasts actually feed on the dough enough to break it down some, to pre digest it for us and buffer or eliminate many of the toxics effects of wheat.

Westin Price was a Doctor that traveled the world investigating indigenous cultures. Awesome guy and he discovered that almost all cultures with adequate food supply were healthier then we are from teeth to heart and everything in between. Some lived almost fully on meat and some used grains in small amounts and some in pretty large amounts. All ate fermented foods, lots of fats and no simple refined sugars. All that used grains either soaked them or fermented them or both.

As for Sally Fallon I learned so much about her since that time that I now consider her to be a hack and a dishonest thief. The real organization that actually has the rights to Dr. Price’s work and was set up by his family is the Price Pottenger Foundation, WHO FIRED HER! She then set up the Westin A Price Foundation on K Street by the way. She has no blessing or sanctioning by the estate, conservatory or family of Dr. Price.

Anyway may be I should do a show on Price?

So here is some info on making a sourdough starter, every recipe for real sourdough will call for this. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/05/creating-your-own-sourdough-starter-the-path-to-great-bread/

Here is what I do to make sourdough pizza crust

1 1/2 cups all purpose or bread flour
1 1/2 cups sourdough starter
1-3 Tbs water (add it as needed to get the right consistency, the starter provides most of the moisture)
2 Tbs olive oil
3/4 tsp. salt

I have to make a starter a few days before each batch because I don’t keep it on hand, we just don’t bake enough to warrant that.