True Sourdough Breads May Be Safe for Celiac Disease Patients

If you suffer from celiac disease and you think you’ll never eat wheat bread again, think again. Some bread-loving Italian researchers have discovered that slow-fermented sourdough bread may be safe for people with celiac disease.

Many Celiac disease patients people who are gluten intolerant have reported that they are free of symptoms when the sourdough bread is prepared with a long proving period.

Baked goods made from fully hydrolyzed wheat flour, manufactured with sourdough lactobacilli and fungal proteases, are safe for patients with celiac disease, according to the January issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Sourdough is an alternative to the standard baker’s yeast that most bread is made from now. It is made from a wild yeast, rather than a cultured yeast and was traditionally used to make bread. This wild yeast contains lactobacillus, which is one of the active ingredients in yogurt.

Free of commercial yeast, sourdough breads have an aroma and a distinctive flavor all their own and are naturally leavened by a fermented starter.

Over the past few years researchers have been experimenting with sourdough fermentation as a means for making traditional wheat bread safe for people with celiac disease.  Recently, yet another study examined the safety of this process with great results.  While the study was small, it did show that individuals with celiac disease who ate specially prepared sourdough wheat bread over the course of 60 days experienced no ill effects.

In the study, 17 people suffering from celiac disease were given 2 grams of gluten containing bread risen with either baker’s yeast or a normal lactobacilli culture. 13 of the 17 showed negative changes in intestinal permeability consistent with celiac disease.  4 people did not show any negative changes.

Then, the 17 study participants were given true sourdough bread risen with a special lactobacilli culture able to hydrolyze the peptide which is the primary amino acid building block that causes an immune response in people with celiac disease.  None showed any negative changes in their intestinal permeability after consuming the bread which was made up of 30% wheat flour and a mix of oat, millet, and buckwheat flours.

The researchers’ conclusions were summarized as follows:

“These results showed that a bread biotechnology that uses selected lactobacilli, nontoxic flours, and a long fermentation time is a novel tool for decreasing the level of gluten intolerance in humans.”

Certainly, most with simple gluten intolerance would find true sourdough bread to be easily consumed with no digestive distress.

What is Sourdough?

Sourdough is bread made without processed yeast. It’s not without yeast, as there is yeast aplenty. But the yeast doesn’t come from a jar or a cake or a packet. You grow your own yeast by mixing flour and water, and letting it sit around on a counter for a while. There’s yeast in flour already, there just isn’t much of it. So you have to provide an environment that’s friendly to yeast growth, and you have to feed it to encourage the natural yeast to multiply and thrive. Luckily yeast eats flour, so all you have to do to feed it is add more flour and water.

The other thing that grows in a sourdough starter is lactobacillus. The bacteria (which are similar to the bacteria that make yogurt and cheese) form a symbiotic relationship with the yeast, eating yeast digestion products, and making the batter very acidic, which kills all the other microorganisms that are floating around in the air and water and everything else. Yeast (at least the kinds you want) can live fine in this acid environment, but nothing much else can, so the bacteria act as a preservative for your starter. The acid produced by these bacteria are also what gives sourdough bread its distinctive yummy taste.

Isn’t wheat highly problematic for those with celiac disease?

Wheat is, yes, potentially one of the most highly allergenic foods on the planet, but like soya beans, converts to a truly great food once it is fermented long enough.

All current breads, pastas, pizzas, cakes, biscuits, contain complex proteins which have not been given the requisite fermentation time to convert to their excellent, digestible alter-egos.

Wheat also contains a difficult starch and a highly allergenic maltose, but within that same complexity, when correctly fermented, there lies varied and splendid nutrients – 18 amino acids (proteins), complex carbohydrate (a super efficient source of energy), B vitamins, iron, zinc, selenium and magnesium, and maltase.

Wheat is a grain, and like all grains, needs to be soaked and fermented prior to cooking/ingestion. As the cookbook, Nourishing Traditions points out, when you prepare grains properly, many tolerance issues disappear.

Why are true sourdough breads easier to digest?

Naturally leavened breads are easier to digest due to their slow, extended, 24 hour fermentation with leaven.

With sourdough bread, complex carbohydrates are broken down into more digestible simple sugars and protein is broken down into amino acids. Enzymes develop during proofing which are not lost in baking since the center of the loaf remains at a lower temperature than the crust.

During the long fermentation required to produce a natural leaven or sourdough, the natural cultures “predigest” the grain, converting carbohydrates into simple sugars and breaking down proteins, making naturally leavened bread easier to assimilate in our digestive systems. This is similar to how beneficial bacteria will culture milk into yoghurt and cheese.

Natural leaven bread, because of its inherent beneficial ferments, slowly recreates the population of friendly lactobacillus digestive bacteria in the absorption tract. The end result is a recovery of digestion and proper elimination by the effective action of friendly bacteria.

While yeast is used almost universally for baking breads anymore, the skyrocketing cases of gluten intolerance and celiac disease are causing many to look backwards at how non-industrialized peoples consumed gluten containing breads with no digestive difficulty.

Gluten intolerance is mostly a modern disease. Traditional bread was made with wild bacteria and yeasts, and allowed to ferment for many hours, or even days. Almost all bread found in the grocery store is made with quick rise yeast in a few hours, and with no bacteria to predigest the gluten and lectins.

Avoid most commercially produced sourdough breads

Most breads labeled as “sourdough” on the market today are anything but sourdough.

These breads typically contain yeast which is the giveaway clue that the bread is a fake sourdough and should be avoided if one seeks a traditionally baked loaf.

True sourdough bread does not contain yeast and instead utilizes a lactobacilli based starter culture.  True sourdough bread is also baked at a lower temperature for a longer period of time which protects the integrity of the cereal grains and preserves the nutritional value.  Not only is the nutritional value maintained, but anti-nutrients such as phytic acid are eliminated and gluten, that very difficult to digest plant protein, is broken down.

There are artisan bakers who use these natural fermentation techniques in their bread if you don’t want to start baking bread yourself.

Make your own sourdough bread by using a Sourdough Starter.

Make your own sourdough bread just like traditional sourdough bread in which one creates a “Starter” from wild yeasts from the air,

Mix some organic, whole grain wheat flour and allow it to ferment for a whole day to allow it to slowly rise and ferment before baking.

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