Sourdough Bread

Natural leaveners introduce live airborne yeasts into dough and yield a bread that is light and totally digestible with a distinctive and delicious sweet or sour taste. Some natural leavening agents are sourdough, miso, rejuvelac, fermented cooked grains, etc.
   Whenever a flour and water mixture remains in a warm place, some natural leavening occurs.
The use of fermented products such as sourdough merely accelerates the leavening process and provides for a certain type of fermentation to take place.

   Quality sourdough products were, until the last few years, a commercial variety in America, although with alittle perseverance they can nearly always be found in Europe. Recently, however, a number of new as well as established American bakeries are offering a variety of sourdough products, made simply with ingredients such as organic whole-grain flour, whole salt, and pure water.

   Sourdough and natural leavening have been with us for thousands of years. Yeast for bread is a relatively recent innovation, discovered in the chemist's lab in France about one hundred years ago.

   According to some European researchers, naturally leavened bread is superior to cultured yeasted bread. Yeasted bread is linked to stomach bloat, indigestion, thin blood, and weak intestines; yeasted products seem uncannily to exacerbate conditions that occur with Candida yeast overgrowth symptoms, including many degenerative diseases. Thus, various European and - more recently - certain American health clinics forbid their clients yeasted bread.

   Commercial yeasted breads, even the whole-grain variety, often have other problems. They typically contain flour bleach, which forms alloxan, a compound known to cause diabetes in animals by destroying the beta cells of the pancreas (Clinical Nutritional Newsletter, Dec. 1982).
Flour bleach does more then bleach. It acts chemically to soften and age flour, and to repel insects.

Other benefits of naturally leavened breads:

·              The long proofing allows the fermenting agents to break down the celluose structure and release nutrients into the dough, improving nutritional value.

·              Contains lactobacillus, which helps generate the intestional flora essential for proper digestion and elimination.

·              The natural bacterial action and baking neutralize nearly all of the phytic acid which occurs in wheat and other grains.(Phytic acid reduces mineral metabolism-especially in those whose diet includes a good percentage of grains and legumes-and can contribute to anemia, nervous disorders, and rickets). About 90% of the phytic acid remains in yeasted breads.

·              It stays edible for weeks and is more delicious and nutritious in 5 to 10 days, if stored in a cool dry place.

 Ingredients Natural Leavened Prussian Rye:

Water, Organic Wheat Flour, Organic Rye Flour, Sourdough Starter (organic wheat and whole rye flours, water) Organic Whole Wheat Flour, salt.

Do you have a Whole Foods Store near you? If so you can purchase different kinds of SourDough bread. We purchase the Prussian Rye located in their bakery department. Fantastic Bread!

Click here for Recipe for Sourdough Rye Bread

Click here for alternative to using butter...GHEE

Directions for making Ghee:

• Place one pound of organic unsalted butter in skillet
• Simmer on a low flame for about 25 minutes until golden brown on bottom of skillet
• Drain liquid butter into strainer pouring liquid butter into glass with a covered jar
• Scrape and throw away remainders on bottom of skillet
• Let cool and cover
• Place covered jar in refrigerator
• Take out after ghee has thickened
• Leave on countertop covered and ENJOY!