Make your own sourdough
Sourdough is an excellent way to add air into your dough. At the same time the taste becomes a little sour adding excellent flavour to the bread. A welcome side effect is that you can eat your bread for a longer period of time as it does not catch mold as fast as yeast-only bread. This is because of the anti-biotic ingredients. Good news, it is really easy to make your own sourdough.
Personally I find sourdough amazing as it is an all natural product. It has been there for thousands of years. Mankind uses fermentation for many great products, wine, beer, sauerkraut and sourdough. It requires a little time initially to create your own sourdough, but then after you can re-use the sourdough for every future bake.
Before there has been artificial yeast there was already bread. In order to be able to turn the flour into something enjoyable mankind developed the sourdough. Without the sourdough your bread would have looked and tasted like a big brick.
Did you ever wonder why at some point your food suddenly starts having mold all around? That is because there is natural yeast and other bacteria in the air. Everything the sourdough does is trapping this natural yeast and bacteria. The bacteria releases lactic acid when eating the flour. The yeast is in charge of creating the carbo-dioxide which makes the bread fluffy. The dough gives the bacteria and yeast a really amazing place to live. Both of them live in harmony in a nice balance. As a baker it is your job to ensure that they feel happy and enjoy their home.
The quantities of yeast and bacteria in the air is minimal and thus it takes some time to gather large quantities in your dough. That’s why on your first sourdough it takes up to a week until significant yeast/bacteria entered your dough and reproduced.
The whole process will take you 7 days with around 2 minutes of time per day. Which means you will spend only 14 minutes in total to have your own sourdough ready. I like to call this dough the mother dough, as it is the mother of all my doughs.