This is Part VI of a seven-part sourdough bread class at Abigail’s Oven taught by Martha Levie.

This course centers on the “Real 7” things you need to make wholesome, nutritious bread at home.

Real Flavor

Things that are truly nutritious are usually delicious. We don’t always realize that in America, because we have this packaged world of convenience. If you go to most grocery stores and buy fresh produce, it’s just not going to taste that great.

These are products grown to look good and not bruise. Fruits and vegetables may have been picked green after being grown with pesticides in depleted soils. It comes from our industrial, “pump it out as fast as we can” culture.

How many of you have ever gone to the store to get some tomatoes for sandwiches only to buy something that looks really nice and red, but tastes like cardboard?

Colour is the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting people’s expectations regarding the likely taste and flavour of food and drink.”—Spence, C. “On the psychological impact of food colour.” Flavour 4, 21 (2015).

When you get hold of an heirloom tomato that someone has grown locally, on the other hand, you find that it has bumps and cracks, but the taste is amazing. Heirloom tomatoes are flavorful because they are vine-ripened and nutritious.

When we eat so-called nutritious food from the store with a vow to eat more healthy food, we often find it has no flavor. This leaves us asking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just eat good food? And why don’t I like it?

Healthy food is equated with awful taste and junk food or fast food is equated with a delicious taste. So we have to suffer through awful taste in order to eat better, lose weight, etc.

In reality, actual nutrition is just the opposite. If you eat foods that are truly nutritious, they’re going to be bursting with real flavor.

Let’s look at an engineered flavor, like in spicy chips. You eat a chip, the MSG opens up your taste buds and you get a burst of flavor, but then it’s gone really fast (try chewing for 30 seconds and notice how that chip tastes).

After the first chip, you want more. So you eat another one and another one and another one and you don’t feel satisfied. These chips are engineered to be that way, to create a craving so you won’t stop eating.

When you eat real food, you get real flavor. In our bread, we want real flavor from things that are truly nutritious.

In other countries, where food has more real flavor instead of manufactured bursts, people don’t have to eat a lot to feel full. Our food in America is so nutrient-lacking that we’re eating ourselves to death, yet we never feel satisfied because we’re lacking nutrition.

Today, finding real sourdough with real flavor can actually be tricky. Often, when you see bread labeled “sourdough,” it’s just regular commercial bread with a sour flavor added.

Real flavor is found in real sourdough bread. Ideally, you want that flavor to develop over eight hours or more of fermentation. In fact, sourdough bread can actually taste better the second day because the flavors improve as they sit.

Something that is truly nutritious has lots of real flavor. This means we have to buy truly nutritious ingredients. Once you know the secrets of real sourdough, you’ll be able to transform the flavor and nutrition of your diet and improve your family’s lifestyle. We’re excited to help you connect with real yeast, real wheat, real nutrition, real water, and real salt, all for real flavor.

(Next Monday, look for the seventh in this series: The “7 Reals” of Sourdough Bread.)