Slowourdough - The importance of time in sourdough making

Hey you! We hope you are keeping happy and safe and, most importantly, well-nourished with some good sourdough bread.

As you may have seen from one of our recent Instagram posts, a few months ago we have decided to leave the frenzyness of London for the calmness of the Norfolk countryside, which is a very important requirement for natural leavening processes, too!

Today, as part of our series on “Sourdough Health Benefits”, we actually want to talk about the role of time in sourdough and pizza making. Why should you spend 24 hours (or even more!) waiting for a sourdough loaf to be ready for baking when you could cut it down to 1-2 hours by using concentrated leavening agents and additives, as it is done with industrial bread? Let’s find out!

Maturation vs. Fermentation

In order to answer this question, let’s be sciency a little. During dough prepping, there are two main biochemical processes happening:

  • Maturation: this is the transformation of complex sugary chains present in the flour (starch, in other words) into simple sugars

  • Fermentation: it consists in the digestion of these simple sugars into sour substances (lactic and acetic acids), alcohol and gas bubbles, all of which contribute to the distinctive appearance and fragrance of sourdough

In other words, maturation is what promotes the formation of the “food” needed to properly ferment the whole dough; hence it represents an often overlooked, but definitely essential step.

How temperature affects maturation and fermentation

Fermentation is conducted by yeast and bacteria. Instead, maturation is conducted by enzymes called amylases, naturally present into grains and released and activated once water hits the flour. Each of these processes is affected by temperature quite differently: fermentation is best done when those bugs are active and healthy (20°C or higher), whereas they tend to become pretty dormant at fridge-low temperatures (4-8°C). Maturation, instead, is effective both at room temperature and when the dough is refrigerated and its ideal duration depends on the starch content of the flour used.

The importance of proper maturation

Both processes are naturally slow, which is why we want to let enough time for them to complete by introducing a refrigerated step to promote sufficient maturation and enough sitting at room temperature to support good fermentation. Obviously, one could try and speed things up quite dramatically by using additives and concentrated baker’s yeast, like it happens in the bread industry: the result will be a dough that has fermented only partially and very rapidly (enough for some gas to be produced to puff up and give the bread its typical shape), has not had time to develop complex flavours and smells or the chance to mature properly so it will still be very rich in starches.

The human gut is not equipped with efficient amylases like those present in grains and it takes a long time to digest sugary polymers. We are sure you have experienced the typical symptoms of “starch” overload when eating quickly fermented bread or pizza: bloating, flatulence and a general heavy-stomach sensation. Instead, if we let amylases do their job, we will save our gut from some extra work and gain a lot in lightness, taste and overall pleasure!

Another advantage of naturally long fermenting/maturing is that gluten is pre-digested, as we have learned in one of our previous articles.

Getting the timings right

These long schedules may sound a little disheartening to many keen bakers but rest assured that effective “hands-on” time is less than 40 minutes over 24+ hours. All the rest is just an exercise of patience, planning and dreaming of that magnificent crackling loaf just out of the oven.  

We recognise it can be daunting to understand how to calculate optimal recipe timings but this is key for exceptional tasty results. Please refer to our “Introduction to Sourdough bread making” course for a detailed tour of the whole process, or book us in for a “One-to-one Troubleshooting” session to discuss about maturation, timings and other areas you wish to get some more clarity on.

Vera Martins