Sourdough
Our Campaillou Sourdough
Our sourdough vats each hold 1,500 kilos of sourdough
There are many different ways of making Sourdough bread. However, in bread making, yeast is normally used to ferment the ingredients. With sourdough, the ingredients (usually just flour and water) are mixed together without yeast and allowed to stand for several days or weeks.
The fermentation happens due to the friendly bacteria and natural enzymes in the flour and the air. In San Francisco, USA, the atmosphere is thought to harbour natural bacteria and natural yeasts giving a distinct flavour to the bread.
Every day the baker takes some of the fermenting sourdough to use to make bread by adding further ingredients. It is essential that the left over sourdough mixture is remixed with fresh ingredients from one day to the next. In some bakeries this process has been repeated for years and even centuries - from the same dough.
There are even companies that specialise in making “starter cultures” to help bakers make their sourdough bread. Sourdough bread has a distinctive “richer” flavour and a firmer chewier texture compared with regular bread.
At Fosters Bakery we have many different sourdoughs perpetually fermenting in large insulated fermentation vats. Every hour we stir the vat and every day we use some of the sourdough and then replenish it for the next day. We make 100% sourdough bread and also breads where we add sourdough to conventional bread.
We have recently installed two new sourdough tanks, these can double our sourdough capacity. This was so exciting for us that we did a blog post on it!