4 Sourdough Bread Benefits: Why all bread should be sourdough bread.

As a Malaysian born and bred, when I think of bread, I think Gardenia. The soft loaves that we usually chowed down for breakfast with kaya and butter before being whisked off to school. That was when we were just kids.

Then as I grew up, bread became a ‘bad’ thing, full of carbs, unhealthy, with low nutritional value and likely to make you gain weight.

So I started cutting it out of my diet because I was trying to eat healthy and lose weight.

And then, my brother started baking sourdough bread. Which sounded extremely weird to me at first, because you know, why would bread be sour? That was not an appetizing thought.

But as his experiments became better and better, and I wanted to encourage him, I started eating his bread. Slowly at first, because my mind still rejected bread as a healthy food that we can consume regularly (not excessively of course). But after a couple of months, sourdough started to grow on me.

First because it’s delicious, but secondly, because it was not causing me to gain weight (even though I was eating a lot of it at one point). So I decided to check out its benefits and here’s what I would like to share.

What is sourdough?

Sourdough in a nutshell, is bread baked in the absence of conventional baker’s yeast.

Rather, ‘wild yeast’ or sourdough starter is the element that helps the dough rise in sourdough bread.

As a result of using this wild yeast, the fermentation takes a lot longer than common bread, but a lot more happens during this process which creates the benefits that I will discuss below.

Sourdough Bread Benefits # 1: More Nutritious

You’d be surprised to find out that the composition of sourdough bread is almost the same as any regular bread. They both may use the exact same flour.

But what elevates the nutrition content of sourdough, is the fermentation process.

To be fair, whole grain breads (depending on the flour used) contain a decent amount of minerals, which include zinc, potassium, magnesium and phosphate. However, there is this one chemical in those flours that works against our body trying to absorb these minerals.

This chemical, is called phytic acid (or phytate). It is found in the bran part of wheat and phytates act like antinutrients because they bind with important minerals like calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, rendering these unavailable to us.

This is incredibly ironic, because we’re buying whole grain bread for the supposed nutrients that we’re not even getting because of the presence phytate in those same whole grain loaves.

I need to take a moment, to let that sad news sink in.

Fortunately, sourdough is a pretty good answer to this sabotage of nutrients. Remember what we said about sourdough needing a much longer fermentation process? Well, one of the things that occur during this sourdough fermentation period is the reduction of phytates by up to 90 percent!  

The lactic acid bacteria in the starter lowers the bread pH, helping it degrade phytates. One study showed that sourdough fermentation reduced the phytate content by 24 to 50% more than conventional yeast fermentation. (Healthline)

That means less phytic acid is left in the sourdough loaf, so more nutrients are made available to be absorbed by our bodies.

To add to that, the lactic acid bacteria also release antioxidants during sourdough fermentation.

So that is the reason why I can confidently say that sourdough bread is much more nutritious than regular bread.

Sourdough Bread Benefits # 2: Aids digestion

There are actually three ways sourdough is gut friendly.

First: Let’s go back to the phytates. Besides them being antinutrients, they actually also bind with enzymes that are required for breaking down proteins and starch in the stomach.

Because of the phytates, we lack those digestive enzymes and that it’s one of the major causes of digestive discomfort and bloating.

But as we learned at point one, the fermentation process neutralizes phytates, thereby freeing up enzymes to aid with digestion.

Secondly, sourdough is much easier to digest because of its prebiotic and probiotic content.  Prebiotics are non-digestible fibres that feed the beneficial bacteria in your gut, while probiotics are beneficial bacteria that colonize your gut and help assist in digestion.

Thirdly, the fermentation process of sourdough lowers the dough’s gluten content. Which makes it easier to be tolerated by people who are sensitive to it.

Sourdough Bread Benefits # 3: No blood sugar spikes.

Although this isn’t yet fully understood, sourdough bread is more friendly towards our body’s blood sugar and insulin levels compared to other types of bread.

Some researchers believe that sourdough fermentation may alter the structure of carb molecules.

This reduces the bread’s glycaemic index (GI) and slows down the speed at which sugars enter the bloodstream.

Some studies have found that participants who consumed sourdough bread had lower blood sugar and insulin levels than those who ate bread fermented with conventional baker’s yeast.

Sourdough Bread Benefits # 4: No additives

A lot of off-the-shelf breads contain many additives like enzymes, preservatives, emulsifiers and improvers, to speed up the baking process and cause bread to last longer.

A lot of these additives are to blame for inducing wheat intolerance in people.

True sourdough bread is made with only four ingredients; water, salt, flour and sourdough starter.

Authentic sourdough is often not bought off the shelf, and usually needs to be pre-ordered due to the long fermentation time. It also usually doesn’t have a long shelf life. Will generally last 3 to 5 days, in Malaysia’s humid weather. If you’d like to try some authentic sourdough bread in Kuala Lumpur, here’re some!

I hope you found this article informative! Leave a comment or questions, or subscribe to our page for updates on future sourdough and kefir articles and videos!

If you’re not a fan of words, here is a video instead, detailing the benefits of sourdough bread 😀 Enjoy!

In the meantime, have a happy healthy day!

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