What is sourdough bread?

Every time someone tells me they want the “sourdough bread” I always respond the same:
-Which one would you like? All of my breads are sourdough breads. 🙂

That reply seems to confuse everyone more than helping. So I would love to use that opportunity to elaborate and explain what sourdough is. Why sourdough is not just one bread but a method. Let’s dig in.

The wild yeast

Sourdough is nothing but a leavening agent. It makes the dough rise. Just like yeast. As a matter of fact it is yeast, in it’s wild form.

Yeast is nothing but a single-celled fungus, it is found in the air, on surfaces, on fruits, in the water, in the flour, etc.
The “sourdough starter” is a colony of wild yeast that is cultivated in flour and water. It’s very simple and its the first form of leavening dough.

Human has always made bread using the sourdough and it’s only from 1930/1950 that the use of commercial baker’s yeast has spread. It’s a new technology if you will.

Baker’s yeast has been invented a little more than 100 years ago by Pasteur. It is one strain of fungus that is perfect for its gas production: “Saccaromyces Cerevisiae” (lit. Beer sugar fungus).

What’s The difference

The most noticeable difference between the two will be the leavening time. Yeast is fast-acting. It fills the dough with air and, in this climate, it makes your dough double in size in 45 minutes.

The sourdough on the other hand takes a long time to leaven. My typical bulk rise time is 5 hours. (The respectus panis takes 12 hours, overnight, to rise.)

This extra time makes a world of difference and makes the sourdough bread very special.
Since its made of thousands of different types of yeast, the sourdough goes through 3 types of fermentations: alcoholic (like in the booze), lactic (like in yogurt) and acetic (like in vinegar). This allows for a complex enzymatic activity inside the dough that lasts over a long period. Those enzymes and the acidity of the dough are responsible for a superior taste, better preservability and a much healthier bread.

The taste

The sourdough gives the bread a great flavor, and like a lot of things in cooking, the longer it takes to make, the better it is.
It fits the slow food philosophy: a locally-made bread, slowly fermented, going back to manual craftmanship, a traditional “savoir-faire” and only using the best ingredient.
A good tasting bread is also

The breaking down of gluten

The enzymes in the dough also make the bread easier on the body. They will start breaking the starches down and “pre-digest” the gluten. This process cannot happen with fast-rising yeast because there is simply not enough time. As a matter of fact, gluten intolerance and other related problems are quite new things for humans. As bakers started to produce faster, the enzymatic activity of their dough was reduced to none, the gluten strands are now left complete and give more work to our poor stomachs. There is not enough time for the enzyme to break down the gluten because time is money. So bakers must go fast.

Or should they?

Real sourdough is when the bread is leavened Only with sourdough

Most of the bread you eat and buy from shops are leavened with yeast. Because it’s quicker and allows for more products in less time.

Some bakers will use the sourdough in complement with the yeast to give taste to the bread. But the leavening, the heavy lifting is made by the yeast. Some will even claim it’s sourdough, when, really it is not sourdoug. It will not have the same benefits and it will not preserve as well. One baker in playa claims everithing is “levain naturel” (natural sourdough in french) when all the leavening is made by the yeast.

Some other bakers will prepare most of their stuff with yeast and have one specialty item on their menu that will be made with sourdough and that’s it.

That’s why a lot of us get confused about what a sourdough bread is or about what we do at Cumpanis.

Our philosophy: Sourdough-only baking

All of our bread are leavened with sourdough. We never use baker’s yeast.
The only thing that changes from bread to bread is the flour mix.

The sourdough leaven the doughs, we just change the blend of flours to create different recipes.

The country loaf is a mix of white bread flour and whole wheat flour and it is leavened by sourdough.
The rye bread is a mix of white bread flour and rye flour and is leavened by sourdough just the same

On top of only using sourdough to leaven our bread, we believe in making the simplest bread. The most natural bread. We believe that by returning to ancestral practices we can make better bread and as a result: a healthier bread.

We believe that it should not contain additives, enhancers, or preservers. It should not contain sugar or fat.

That’s why we make the bread with only 3 ingredients. Flour, water and salt. Those are simple ingredients: you can pronounce their names and you can count them on the fingers of one hand.

Which Sourdough would you like?

Visit our menu and explore the infinite possibilities our breads open up for you. Cumpanis: The sourdough bread of Playa del Carmen