A few weeks ago, I was at a restaurant for lunch and we ordered a serve of sourdough bread as an entrée. It turned out to be the best damn bread I’ve ever eaten (a generous helping of delicious whipped butter may have tilted the scales in its favour). It got me ruminating on the difference between traditional and modern breadmaking. As is often the case, the most fundamental things contain the most fundamental truths, and it can barely get more fundamental than bread. So, let’s talk about sourdough.
The first thing to note is the name. Why is the dough sour? Because that’s what happens when you ferment flour. Most people would know that to make a sourdough loaf, you need a “starter”, and this is made from the simple act of combining flour and water and leaving it out at room temperature for a period of time. Natural yeasts will go to work making the dough sour (fermented).
For as long as people have made leavened bread, this is the method they have used. An almost identical method was used for other fermented foods like beer and yoghurt. That changed in the latter part of the 19th century. Advances in science and technology made it possible to separate specific yeasts for specific tasks. The result was the pre-packaged yeasts for bread, wine, beer, and yoghurt that you can now buy.
This seemingly simple and innocuous change from natural yeast to pre-packaged yeast altered breadmaking from what, in systems theory, is called a complex process to a simple one. Making a sourdough loaf is complex. Making a modern commercial loaf is simple.
The difference between a simple and a complicated process is just the number of steps involved. The more important point is that a fixed number of steps produce the same outcome every time. This is, of course, the basis of reductionist science. If you’re running a science experiment, you must control the variables. More than that, you must reduce the number of variables to ensure a specific outcome. Isaac Newton was the original reductionist genius, and he inspired generations of scientists to apply the same method elsewhere. Eventually, that method made it into the general culture. Modern breadmaking is one such example.
In relation to breadmaking, the reductionism occurs with the transition from natural yeast to pre-packaged yeast. When you make a sourdough starter, you are creating a living ecosystem that contains a heap of different fungi and bacteria. It is the presence of bacteria in the natural yeast which gives sourdough its distinctive and unique flavour. Commercial bread yeast, on the other hand, contains only a single strain of fungi, which gives no flavour to the bread. Therefore, the end result depends entirely on the quality of the flour and any other additives.
The modern method makes the process faster, more predictable, and more reliable because it makes it simpler. Rather than dealing with the living organism that is natural yeast, the baker is only dealing with a specific type of fungus which is in dormant state via dehydration. Combined with a second innovation that arrived in the 19th century – new milling techniques that removed the germ from the flour – you get a bread that is quick and easy to produce. Of course, it lacks the flavour that comes from the bacteria in natural yeast, and it lacks the vitamins and minerals from the germ. The tradeoff was taste and nutrition versus speed and predictability.
Eventually, science figured out how to put some of the vitamins and taste back into the bread. Once advances in HVAC technology allowed the temperature and humidity of the baking environment to be tightly controlled, commercial breadmaking was born. It relies on teams of experts to manufacture and maintain the HVAC equipment, produce the purified yeast, mill the grain, etc.
Commercial breadmaking is a complicated process but not a complex one. There are a lot of moving parts, but all those parts are standardised so that the end result is produced with certainty. The end result is itself standardised, repeatable, and reliable.
By contrast, traditional breadmaking is a complex process. There are limits to the temperature and humidity extremes that a natural yeast can tolerate, but the yeast is already selected from the local environment anyway. As a living organism, the yeast is always reacting and responding to that environment, changing with the arc of the seasons or other stimuli provided by the baker.
Therefore, every loaf of sourdough is different because you are never using the same yeast twice in the same conditions. This means that the baker must pay close attention to what is going on. A skilled baker also knows how to tweak all the other variables involved such as the type of grain used, how it is milled, how long to knead it, etc.
Traditional breadmaking is evolutionary in nature. It involves a series of feedback loops between the baker, the yeast, the grains, and the environment. Every loaf is its own feedback loop and the lessons from one loaf carry over to the next. The skilled baker learns the more abstract principles of the craft and how to use them to obtain a certain effect. All this makes the art of sourdough breadmaking a complex process.
As a result, there can be no such thing as a recipe for sourdough bread. It is not possible to define the steps exactly in advance because conditions are never the same. It is up to the baker to use their judgement. That judgement is not based on fixed, immutable rules but on heuristics. Heuristics are fallible guidelines.
That’s another property of a complex process: it can fail. Every beginner sourdough baker knows the pain of having a loaf that literally and metaphorically flops. The skill and judgement to guide a loaf to a successful completion only comes after learning the lessons from such failures.
The practical effect of all this is that the taste of the bread will change over time. Sourdough aficionados will tell you that the starter improves the longer you use it. In truth, it is not just the starter that improves but, more importantly, the baker. To say it again, sourdough breadmaking is a living process where the baker, the yeast, and the grains are in an evolutionary relationship that grows and develops over time.
By contrast, modern breadmaking aims never to change. It’s always the same fungi in the same amount added to the same consistency flour in the same environmental conditions. With these variables fixed, skilled human practitioners can be replaced with machines and the engineers who maintain them.
Why would we want to replace skilled humans with machines? Well, the standard argument is an economic one. Modern breadmaking is quicker, more efficient, and doesn’t require any oversight from a baker. Therefore, it frees up people for more important jobs like Human Resources Manager, Senior Strategic Advisor, or Vice President of Innovation.
Of course, some traditional bakers who have been made redundant might go on to play a role in the new breadmaking process by becoming HVAC engineers, biotech lab workers, grain millers, etc. Notice that they are no longer in control of the process but are only one component of it, and their role is to produce the standardised outcomes that make the overall procedure work. It’s like changing jobs from being conductor of the orchestra to violinist. Of course, the conductor role is made redundant since every performance will now be exactly the same.
Sounds boring, doesn’t it? The price we pay for standardisation and reproducibility is that we have to eat bread that tastes objectively worse. Skilled breadmaking produces better-tasting bread, and it’s not even close. Once you’ve tasted the difference, it’s very hard to go back to eating supermarket slop.
But taste is also a proxy for nutritional value. Thus, we can surmise that sourdough bread is also healthier than its commercial counterpart. Here we hit upon an issue that probably plays a much larger role in current society than we know. What is the health impact of consuming standardised foods made with purified yeasts instead of yeasts from your local environment? Wouldn’t our microbiome become less well adapted to its environment?
There’s also a more direct way in which traditional bread affects our health. Sourdough takes longer to ferment and, as we have discussed, includes a more complex variety of fungi and bacteria to do the job. The result is that the starches in the bread get broken down more, and this makes the bread easier to digest. How much of the explosion of “gluten sensitivity” in the last few decades is a result of eating commercial breads and other manufactured foods?
It turns out that standardised food does not just result in a non-evolutionary process for the breadmaker, but also for us as the consumer. Standardisation is deliberately non-adaptive. It freezes one specific type of outcome in place and says that this is the truth in all times and places.
Putting it all together, we see that the modern breadmaking process mirrors the underlying philosophy of our society. We want standardisation, control, reproducibility, and automation. We want to remove skilled human practitioners and replace them with autonomous processes that run on fixed rules overseen by teams of “experts”. In order to get that outcome, we simplify reality by reducing the number of variables, denying the processes of evolution, and disconnecting ourselves from our local environment.
To reconnect with the evolutionary process of life is to open yourself up to the potential for failure. That’s why the catchphrase of the modern system is “safety”. There’s no need to risk failure for yourself. The experts will keep you safe from such difficulties. Let them deliver your daily bread. Yes, it will be tasteless and bland, but it will be reliably tasteless and bland.
Bonjour Simon,
Thought you’d like this:
‘In a different area of private life, there is the wide range of effects mechanization has had upon food, for example, through the various new methods of preservation and storage. I. have already mentioned the profound modification of bread, which has become a chemical substance of very different composition from that produced from simple cereal grains.. Beginning with Sylvester Graham’s Treatise on Bread, a number of studies have shown to what degree the organic structure of bread has been modified by the machine and by the science of chemistry. The result was a profound modification of taste, as if “the consumers, by an unconscious reaction, adapted their taste to the type of bread which corresponded exactly to the demands of mass production.” Mechanization shattered the age-old character of bread and converted it into a valueless article of fashion. This statement is not an aesthetic judgment or a lingering romanticism, but rather the result of exact technical studies, a technical fact established by technicians; this in itself presupposes it is not a value judgment. We are registering a fact and not nostalgia for the old whole-wheat bread of our ancestors. It is a fact of the same order as the retreat of wine before Coca-Cola; the ancient “civilization of wine” is becoming obsolescent as a result of an industrial product.’
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jacques-ellul-the-technological-society
Yves-Marie – thank you for that. I hadn’t heard of that work, but I can already see from the table of contents that I will be in furious agreement with it.
It’s an interesting question whether there was a “modification of taste” with the new breadmaking. My guess is that, if you sat people down and got them to taste properly made sourdough and then commercial bread, almost all of them would say the sourdough was better, in the same way that everybody would say that Mozart is better than electronic dance music. I suspect there’s an element of rebellion involved in claiming that things that are objectively worse are actually better. This might be what Ellul calls “fashion”.
Homemade bread, sourdough or otherwisw also spoils a lot slower. When I worked as a shephard I lived up in the mountains with no refrigiration, and shopping meant to hike up and down a mountain. So, it was more frugal to just get some flour and bake it myself.
This shows how even the excuse that commericial bread saves time does not always hold up. I was 8 hours in pasture and spent an additional time at the barn and still found it easier to just make my own.
Hi Simon,
But taste is also a proxy for nutritional value Absolutely! That’s a fine observation, to which I agree, of course excluding sweet and salty tastes, which people are trained to expect. Plus those two are easily reproduced.
It’s an intriguing subject, and if you look at a painting of people working in wheat fields from several centuries ago, it’s quite the shock just how tall the seed producing grasses once were. Reduced sized plants may have higher yields and are easier to harvest with lower labour, but are the grains as good? Plus as you note, taking the germ out is not much good, but the flour will last longer, mostly because it becomes an inert substance with low food value.
Incidentally, the same story is true for all sorts of plant and animal produce we consume. Hmm.
Cheers
Chris
Bakbook – you should have imported the bread from Ireland instead 😛 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/coles-freshly-baked-bread-made-in-ireland-court-told-1.1425965
Chris – my understanding is that the shorter wheat strain is preferred because it works better with combine harvesters. I believe that’s also related to there being less protein in it. The joys of standardisation!
Simon,
The bread analogy can be applied to governance, no? This would explain why leaders of opposite sides (in all fields) that take everything in the same direction. The answer is always money, technology and top down control. True democracy would require a culture of maturity and humility where we are able to accept failure when we see it.
The quality of people’s state of mind seems to effect the behaviour of micro-organisms. This may be an unconscious cause for the usage of the word “culture” for sourbread starters. Jesus likely understood the connection, thus his use of the simile dough set into three and leaven.
Jinasiri – “Culture” was originally about agri-culture, i.e. to till and fertilise the land in order to promote the growth of healthy crops. It’s actually only fairly recently that the metaphor about human society has become dominant. Do we even have culture anymore i.e. do our politicians see it as their job to cultivate a healthy society? I don’t think they do. They have the mindset of the managerial class. They see their job as simply to ensure the machine keeps ticking over by administering rules and regulations.
There was a great example of that earlier this year here in Victoria. The west of the state was in drought, and government drought payments were being made to farmers. However, there was a ridiculous situation where two farmers were neighbours, but only one was getting the payments. A journalist asked the premier, who said that drought payments were based on postcode and there was nothing she could do about it. The postcodes in western Victoria stretch over large distances, so presumably the farmer who wasn’t getting paid was in the western tip of his postcode. Anyway, the point is that the premier saw her job as simply to administer the rules, not to actually do what was right.
Hi Simon, On a similar but different note, I remember long ago buying salad greens in an airlocked bag from the supermarket. The stuff lasted a good week or more in the fridge, even once opened. Once I started growing my own, I was surprised to discover that salad greens begin wilting almost immediately. Another surprise was that pesto made from those greens will not last overnight in the fridge without a massive negative taste change. I now think that growing your own / making your own gives better taste and health outcomes. I also remember someone I knew getting a delivery of ready made meals that included sliced ‘fresh’ tomatoes in a sealed bag, and peeled and sliced hard boiled eggs in a bag. Fresh as a daisy apparently. Sandra
Simon,
Yups, old fashion farming, bread making and mental cultivation all have in common a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong as the source of true life. In Sri Lanka, the threshing floor was always consecrated with salt and special ceremonial language was developed to demarcate the energy of the harvest from the compromises of everyday life. The first of the harvest is still today offered to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. As stated, Jesus saw the magic of the heart in breadmaking.
My definition of culture is a way of doing things based upon and for the sake of abandoning evil – ie. greed, hatred, delusion and fear. Simultaneously it is also a way of doing things based upon and for the sake of cultivating good – ie. contentment, love and forgiveness, wisdom and courage. Real culture awakens a kind of intuition for the flow of life which has a funny habit of pushing against legalisms (although laws have their role too, especially old ones).
What we have now is a kind of anti-culture, anti-civilisation and anti-life. I’m not into paranoia myself, but I sure do understand how people get that way.
How late was the adoption of “culture” to describe society? If it was after the industrial revolution, it makes sense that people associate culture with the Spice Girls (I’m afraid that’s the latest pop reference I know – I really am a dinosaur of a monk).
But we might subvert the scheme by connecting it once more to the natural connection between man, earth and the heavens that was the usual thing on village farms (and bakeries) of yesteryear… and still some places in Sri Lanka today, although only barely.
Life in the Australian suburbs should be reconceived as a place to cultivate a society of lady and gentlemen farmers.
… old fashion farmers have a way of not putting up with rubbish forever…
Sandra – If the yeasts in the environment don’t want to eat it, then the yeasts in your digestive system are going to have the same opinion. When you start to look at the effects of unhealthy microbiomes, it’s like a laundry list of the chronic diseases that have become increasingly common ever since we started wrapping everything in plastic. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of money in “public health” and it’s in the interests of those receiving that money to never find the real problem.
Jinasiri – Modern concepts around culture and aesthetics arose in the German-speaking lands in the late 18th and 19th centuries. That was very closely related to the political and religious crisis that Germany was going through at the time. The Germans were the first to invent the “culture wars”. However, this split goes right back to the Catholic Church and its battles against the kings of Europe. Thus, the concern with “culture” in the 19th century was directly related to the decline of religion. Culture was supposed to take the place of religion, which it somewhat did. But that just meant that the state would go to war against its own people instead of against the church; hence the tens of millions of deaths. (We saw the same dynamic during the covid debacle).
Simon – You mean to tell me someone in Ireland produces dough, then it is moved to the other side of the world, where it is baked in order to make it “Australian” and it is then being sold?
Sounds like neoliberalism pulling soviet union levels of inefficiency. But hey, wgo said the British Empire’s dead? Do you think they will consider taking us back?
Bakbook – to make it even more crazy, Australia is one of the world’s top exporters of wheat. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that we sell the wheat to Ireland and then buy back the dough. Global trade is full of many such absurdities. From the system’s point of view, however, it makes sense because the system wants to maximise the number of transactions so that it can monetise everything.
There is a similar deal with tomatos between us and turkey. Both countries produce great tomatos that could feed a large portion of their own population, but a lot of them go to export.
So, a lot of tomatos in sold Israel are actually from Turkey, but I found out to my surprise the turks end up needing to import tomatos too, and my understanding is that some of them are from Israel.
Simon,
You wrote:
“Culture was supposed to take the place of religion, which it somewhat did. But that just meant that the state would go to war against its own people instead of against the church; hence the tens of millions of deaths. (We saw the same dynamic during the covid debacle).”
I don’t quite understand what you’re saying here and I think it’s important that I do. Can you expand, please?
Bakbook – this is a side effect of globalism/neoliberalism. Leaders of nations are no longer concerned with making use of their own resources and optimising for internal concerns. Instead, everybody connects up to the “market”. The market wants to maximse the number of transactions, since that’s how everybody gets paid.
Jinasiri – actually, I’ve been mulling this over and I think there’s a whole series of posts in it. Stay tuned til next week 😛
One of my hobbies is homebrewing, and beer being liquid bread, has the equivelant to sourdough. Before the isolation of beer yeast, brewers would catch wild yeast from the air.
I ended up doing this by accident. My first fermentation tank was plastic, which edventually ends up housing germs. This is when you typically replace the thing, and I ended up graduating to a glass carboy, which is easier to sanitize and clean, but I keep using the plastic container as a “secondery” – meaning I briefly store almost ready beer there before botteling.
The wild yeast that lives in this old plastic bucket is actually quite lovely and helps making my beer special, so in some beers I feel like they could benefit from it, I purposfully put there for them to get “contaminated”.
Thing is, it being a wild yeast makes things a little unpredictable. For example, wild yeasts are known for going overdrive while in the bottle producing more carbon dioxide than intended, so sometimes you open a bottle and everything gashes out like champagne.
Most of my friends don’t mind the occasional gasher, but I recently gave a bottle to a work aquintance, and when asking if he enjoyed it, he said he did not like how the beer gashed out, so he was not interested in more bottles, even though he admitted it was a great tasting beer.
I guess much like in bread, some prefre their tasteless predictable lager.
Sounds like a good metaphor for life. Would you prefer a life that gushes out of the bottle or does exactly what’s written on the label? Actually, I’m pretty sure most people really do prefer the safe option. That manifests in a counterintuitive way by people filling up their time with activities, each of which is a standardised option and therefore safe and predictable. They fly from one thing to the next which means they “don’t have time” for the beer that gushes out of the bottle.
I guess this is one of the reasons people get addicted to porn? When meeting someone new, you never know what they are into.
Porn in the orher hand is often divided into fetishes. So you know you will get the sexual stimulus you crave, every time.
And, unfortunately if the addiction is too severe, some find they do not have time to spend the evening meeting actual people for a real relationship.
Porn probably makes a better example than bread or beer because everybody knows that it’s wrong and, yet, if you make it free and easy, it will get used. Then you get an entire society that is addicted to vice.