Secrets of Sourdough: Science on the SPOT | KQED

my name is Eduardo Morel and I'm the founder and owner of morels bread I started morels bread back in 2001 along with the with the assistance of my wife who actually was in the bakery with me for the first few years of the business from so my daughter was born and it's been ten years now that I've been running the business the idea of sourdough in general can be a little bit confusing to so many people because there are so many breads out there that are labeled sourdough which actually aren't sourdough at all for a long time the idea of San Francisco sourdough was just this really sour tasting bread it didn't have anything to do with natural fermentation all they were doing was adding some kind of acid to make it this tangy product that people associated with San Francisco sourdough the reality of it is that sourdough can be produced anywhere in the world with the bacteria and the yeasts and stuff and the sourdough starters and sometimes the natural leavened bread isn't specifically all that sour it's you know it's a much more mild flavor depending on how much you're fermenting it I started to develop this interest in the science of a sourdough culture it was all trying to get back to what bread making has been for thousands of years I think that sourdough starters was just the way to do bread up until yeast became commercialized what starter means to me and what started is you just take flour and water and you're creating a medium for these microorganisms that are in the air that we're breathing right now to pollen eyes they could take a little piece of that dough mix that into a new dough and that dough would start rising the bacterias and yeasts are doing their job consuming the starch producing gas for the bread to rise and this is fermentation it is a form of making food more nutritious and more digestible my lab is interested in the beneficial bacteria you find in foods and in our gastrointestinal tracts and a particular we're interested in group of organisms called lactic acid bacteria which are essential for many fermented plants and dairy foods fermented food is actually the result of extensive microbial growth when you eat yogurt you're actually eating product made by bacteria and which probably still contains a high amount of living bacteria which are perfectly harmless and sometimes even helpful fermented foods include sausage salami cheese and fermented plant foods like olives and sourdough breads sourdoughs really fascinating because it's a marriage between a yeast and a bacterium there's a difference between the yeast you find in typical supermarket bread and yeast you find in sourdough bread and supermarket bread just typically made using baker's yeast or Saccharomyces cerevisiae is able to consume the sugars in the dough for growth that's different from the yeast you find in sourdough bread yeast being Canada millerite and it's dependent on the bacteria you find in the bread lactobacillus San Fran's census or San Francisco for short to consume the sugar it's bit part of it back out and that's what allows the yeast to grow this lactobacillus species is really only found in sourdoughs nowhere else like other lactic acid bacteria produces organic acids as a result of its growth this particular organism produces a lot of acetic acid which is vinegar acid that acid gives the bread a very sour taste so my day varies anywhere between you know 15 16 hours I usually come in the bakery the first thing I do I start the fire in the oven and fortunately with the efficiency of these ovens in terms of heat retention once the fire starts it goes I do feel like a scientist sometimes when I bake I think cooking is you know science to a certain extent it's taking raw materials my raw materials being wood flour water and salt and you know exerting a force on them and I start with those things in 16 hours later I have a complete product which I can you know then take to the farmers market and sell to someone so it's a little bit of physics it's a little bit of biology in a little bit of chemistry it's all rolled into one no pun intended the bread it's a lot of dough to mix the work that I used to do by hand I was able to find the kind of this diving arm make sure that really emulates the way in which breads hand needed by the time I'm finished mixing and kneading very last dough the first no it mixed in needed is ready to be shaped we go through this process of shaping for about three hours all the dough is cut and shaped and then I put into the proof box if it's cold in the kitchen or was that keeps it warm or not as soon as the last dough's are cut in shape then the first dough's are ready to go into the oven then it's all baking for the next three and a half hours I've always been fascinated by science both my parents physicians my brothers you know was a scientist and I took science lots of science classes when I was in college I was an English major taking all these science classes too I just was fascinated by that and so it's really interesting that what I do now is both creative and scientific and I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive I don't think the creativity in science are you know these two separate disciplines I think they're very much at a point and I and I do find the the beauty and the creativity and science when you taste a bread it is truly naturally lemon bread you're like wow you know this isn't just a one-dimensional thing it's this really rounded more kind of dimensional flavor as opposed to just being sour a lot of people who say no I don't like sourdough they try my bread and they're just eating it happily and then like this is sourdough I'm like absolutely this is truly sourdough real sour dough bread naturally lemon bread you

Channel: KQED

Views: 838,858

Keywords: pbs, kqed, quest, bake, baker, baking, bread, eduardo morrell, lactic acid bacteria, maria marco, san francensis, sourdough, UC Davis, yeast, how to make sourdough, science of sourdough, sourdough starter, how to make bread, san francisco, bread maker

Id: y5xOpss4j5E

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2011