Sourdough Starter vs Instant Yeast

Hi, Martha Levi here to talk a little bit more about sourdough bread. Today I have a loaf of store-bought bread, leavened by baker’s yeast. This is a packet of your typical yeast you would find at the grocery store to make bread; Fleischmann’s active dry yeast. We used Fleishman all growing up, great baker’s yeast.

And then I have a loaf of whole wheat sourdough that I made with this jar of sourdough that I love. The start is just flour and water mixed together. I want to talk about the difference between these two leavening agents, what they do, what they do for your bread, and then what they do in your body when you consume them.

Sourdough

Let’s start with this one because it’s older. A sourdough start is made by mixing flour and water. Then the natural bacteria and yeast that is in the air, on the grain, and on your hands, get mixed in. As you feed it more flour and water every day, you eventually build up this little condo for active bacteria where they consume the starches, then spit out lactic acid and acetic acid. At the same time, the yeast works in tandem with the bacteria, producing carbon dioxide. This bubbles up and that is what leavens the sourdough bread.

Also when you mix it in your bread dough it will help to break down any natural irritants that might be in the wheat, like gluten. Gluten is a little bit of an irritant, as you may well know. As so many people have gluten-intolerance, celiac disease, and so on. Sourdough helps to process the gluten and make it really digestible for your body.

It’s also great for diabetics because sourdough bread is really low on the glycemic index because of the lactic acid and acidic acid slows down digestion. This breaks everything up so you can get all the nutrients out of the wheat by going really slow.

So there’s a lot of great things for your body with this as is the leavening agent for sourdough bread. Now, let’s compare that to baker’s yeast.

Baker’s Yeast

Sourdough was discovered about the time of the Egyptians; we’ve had it for thousands of years. Baker’s yeast on the other hand was actually developed in the late eighteen-hundreds. Both use natural bacteria. Sourdough bacteria are called lactobacilli, while baker’s yeast bacteria is saccharomyces.

Baker’s yeast has different kinds of yeast that were actually made in a lab. It has neither wild yeast nor bacteria that actually produce any liquid acid as sourdough does. But this yeast and bacteria work together really fast. The yeast consumes the sugars and spits out carbon dioxide at a massive rate because there are no bacteria producing acids that break down the glutens like in sourdough. So it just pops out the bubbles and raises it in about 30 minutes.

You can double dough in 30 minutes, but it’s not doing anything to help you digest the wheat. Commercial bread just rises super fast, so what you’re left with is this yeast in your body along with the irritants in the flour that are just sitting in your gut.

This is what it’s doing: yeast will get you to process starches super fast. It will spike your blood sugar. That’s why diabetics, number one thing, they can’t eat—well besides sugar—you think about a diabetic and you think, “Oh, they can’t eat sugar ” and they can’t eat bread because it spikes their blood sugar; it is because of this yeast.

The yeast, in and of itself, also can sit in your gut and grow, and grow, and grow, and grow. People will tell you, “Oh, these bacteria die at 140 degrees. You don’t have to worry about it.” But they don’t tell you is that when yeast is in distress, it sends out these little spores. It’s a coping mechanism so that it can survive, right? So it sends out these spores right before it dies and the spores turn into more yeast.

So this bread is filled with baby spores that you’re consuming, that get in your gut and grow. And you’ve got this yeast in there that sends all these messages to your brain that they want sugar, more and more, and more sugar. Pretty soon you’ve got all of this irritant, this very, very acidic, bad kind of acid. The yeast in there also causes candida, eczema, all sorts of problems in your body.

So not only are you consuming wheat that has not been broken down, you’re consuming this yeast that causes lots of issues in the body. So it’s just a better idea to go with the homemade sourdough bread versus the store-bought baker’s yeast bread for not only for taste but also for what it will do to the inside of your body.

Have a happy day.