At 4am, when I am fending off my evil night-time voice, I have begun to step through the process of making sourdough.
I realise we are well out of lockdown and sourdough is passé. But just as the Australian wheat crop is forecast to decline off record highs, the urge to bake has lately taken hold of me and may never let go.
Like all of my past and present pursuits – horses and yoga among them – it shares commonalities. You can approach these three hobbies expecting the same result day after day but you will rarely achieve it.
A horse that is impeccably behaved one day may not behave the same way the next day, particularly if you don’t have your Zen on.
On the yoga mat, you can exhale the rubbish of the day, stand on one leg in tree pose, as steady and straight as spotted gum. The next day, you can’t balance to save yourself.
So it is with sourdough – a hobby I have taken up 25 years after moving to a wheat farm.
Basic sourdough has only three ingredients: flour, water and salt. As a fermented food, it requires a good starter, which is also made from flour and water.
In theory, with so few ingredients and a basic recipe, you should be able to turn out a reasonable loaf every time. Right? Wrong. The thing about sourdough baking is that temperature, time and flour are ever-changing.
For the ordinary home baker, while achieving consistency is a struggle, the variables compel you forward, to the point where you are getting up to stare lovingly at your fermenting loaf at 1am in the morning.
Ask Kate Reid, the former Formula One aerospace engineer who simply set out to create the perfect croissant. She is now the queen of the damn-near-close-to-perfect croissant, sent out daily through her Lune bakeries.
While perfect can be the enemy of the good, a recent paper by University of New South Wales dieticians Jaimee Hughes and Sara Grafenauer shows most sourdoughs ain’t even close to sourdoughs.
Their analysis collected ingredients, nutrition information and on-pack claims from a range of products at four Sydney supermarket chains (Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA) and a Baker’s Delight franchise.
It found 83% of sourdough bread contained a range of additional ingredients not traditionally found in sourdough. These included yeast (44% of sourdough products), wheat malt flour (49%), wheat gluten (30%), emulsifiers (24%), vinegar (15%), lecithin (7%), raising agents/baking powder (6%), acidity regulators (3%), preservatives (3%), bread improver (3%), humectant (2%) and stabilisers (1%).
The reason, presumably, is that sourdough is a growing market, something of a star carbohydrate among consumers, many of whom remain locked in a cycle of torment over what to eat. To carb or not to carb, that is the question.
The eating public seems to like the idea of an old-fashioned fermented bread because of what the authors call a “health halo”, even though it may not be the product they imagine.
“Consumers may believe these products are better for health, regardless of whether this can be validated through claims or other labelling information,” the authors write.
In Australia, we are not prescriptive about our sourdough. In Europe, definitions change across countries. Austrian and German bakers can’t use yeast in loaves claiming to be sourdough. Spain needs a sourdough loaf to have at least 15% starter but Spanish bakers can use yeast.
Given bread is such a staple in many cultures, there are various movements to create a rulebook of sorts. The Real Bread Campaign in the UK is pushing an Honest Crust Act designed to stop misleading customers with loaves that amount to “sourfaux”, using extra additives. They also want bread “free of pesticides and other agrochemicals”.
For Grafenauer though, it comes down to authenticity. She is hoping the research inspires “a little more care” about brand claims and marketing, because the big move for consumers is knowing where your food comes from.
So if you are standing in the bread aisle at your local supermarket, Grafenauer’s best advice is to go for wholegrain, for the higher dietary fibre, higher plant protein and lower salt “whether it’s sourdough or a normal yeast loaf”.
“If you are looking for sourdough because you really love that taste, turn over and read the ingredients. If you’re legitimately looking for something that is sourdough, you do need to look to see that it is just flour, salt, water – a hint – and the leaven or leftover starter,” she says.
Personally, I will be found with a light dusting of Australian wheat flour down my front, stretching and folding a large dough baby and hoping Australian wheat forecasts do not decline too far this year.
