Secrets of Sourdough (encore)

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, you can find a huge variety of breads on supermarket shelves, only a few of which are called "sourdough." For most of human history, though, any bread that wasn't flat was sourdough—that is, it was leavened with a wild community of microbes. And yet we know surprisingly little about the microbes responsible for raising sourdough bread, not to mention making it more nutritious and delicious than bread made with commercial yeast. For starters, where do the fungi and bacteria in a sourdough starter come from? Are they in the water or the flour? Do they come from the baker's hands? Or perhaps they're just floating around in the foggy air, as the bakers of San Francisco firmly believe? This episode, Cynthia and Nicky go to Belgium with two researchers, fifteen bakers, and quite a few microbes for a three-day science experiment designed to answer this question once and for all. Listen in for our exclusive scoop on the secrets of sourdough. (encore presentation) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once upon a time, not too long ago, Nikki and I went on a trip together to Belgium and
0:05.6	I ate more bread in a couple of days than I have ever eaten at any one time.
0:10.5	It was a glorious time, and one of our favorite episodes, and that's why we're bringing it
0:16.1	back again because it's too delicious not to.
0:19.0	This is an encore presentation of our sourdough episode, enjoy!
0:30.0	How can I not? It's so good. It's a worm and yummy hot.
0:35.0	I'm going to taste some of this. Oh, Nikki? Hot potato with garlic butter.
0:42.0	Welcome to an episode of Carb Lovers Anonymous. Not so anonymous, Nikki, they know who we are.
0:48.0	I'm Cynthia Grieber, and I'm Nicola Twilly, and this is actually Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the
0:54.0	lens of science and history. And Cynthia and I are the not so anonymous Carb Lovers.
0:59.0	We spent three days in Belgium with two scientists and more than a dozen bakers.
1:03.0	We were in theory investigating a deep scientific question about bread, but actually,
1:08.0	we were eating our body weight in bread and Belgian waffles.
1:13.0	Nikki, I'm still much or I can forgive you for encouraging me to eat that second hot liege waffle.
1:17.0	I felt a little sick afterwards, but it was freaking amazing.
1:20.0	Listeners, I ask you, was that a bad thing that I did? No.
1:24.0	When in Belgium, eat the liege waffles.
1:27.0	But you're not here to find out how many pieces and what type of bread we gorged ourselves on in a 72-hour
1:33.0	period. You want to know what we wanted to know all about sourdough.
1:37.0	In fact, many of you have written us emails asking us to do this very episode.
1:41.0	For instance, listener Alex Friedman, who lives nearby in Somerville Book Group in San Francisco,
1:45.0	wanted to know about the history of sourdough. Alex were on it.
	...

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