More Than Bread: Sourdough As a Window Into The Microbiome
Home bakers in the U.S., Europe and some other countries have volunteered their sourdough starters to a team of American scientists who want to unravel the microbial secrets of sourdough.
Benjamin Wolfe sticks his nose into a Ziploc bag and takes a whiff. "Ooh! That's actually kind of nice," he says. Inside the bag is a pungent, beige goop. It's a sourdough starter — a slurry of water, flour, yeasts, and bacteria — from which loaves of delicious bread are born. And it's those microbes that have the attention of Wolfe, a microbiologist at Tufts University.
As the microbes munch on the sugars in the flour, they produce carbon dioxide, ethanol, acids, and a smorgasbord of other compounds that give sourdough its bouquet of flavors and aromas.
It's got "a little bit of buttery and barnyard," he says. He hands me the bag to sniff, and surprisingly, it does smell like butter. But barnyard?
