Sourdough Bread and Celiac Disease

[Guest guest]

On the SCD, we cannot eat wheat bread because wheat is a starch,

which is a polysaccharide. However, I came across an article that I

thought was interesting. It says that sourdough starters in the past

used a combination of yeast and our good friend lactobacillus

acidophilous on the dough, for up to 24 hours. This is similar to

what we are doing with our yogurt - letting the lactobacillus

acidophilous work on the lactose to digest it into a monosaccharide

so it won't feed anything else (except us) once we ingest it. I'd

hate for someone to get ill from trying this, but on the other hand,

it fits in with the logic if of the SCD.

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.denvernaturopathic.com/news/sourdough.html

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Sourdough Bread and Celiac Disease

Schor, ND

April 5, 2007

It is Passover, the holiday in which we eat only unleavened bread and

as a result I find myself thinking constantly about bread and bread.

The art of baking leavened breads dates back nearly 10,000 years to

ancient Egypt . So also does the practice of brewing beer. The

ancient Egyptians were serious beer drinkers, fermented beverages

made from grain were a mainstay of their diet. Some theories credit

alcohol production as the primary impetus for hunter gathering

peoples to abandon their way of life in favor of farming. Those who

farmed had an ample supply of grains and could have all the beer they

wanted.

Leavened bread was probably an accident. Living and cooking amid vats

of brewing beer, it was only a matter of times until yeast got into

the dough and a lucky baker found that the bread had gone puffy.

Though accidental at first, early bakers quickly discovered that it

was more reliable to use a starter, a bit of uncooked dough saved

from the previous day's baking. These bread starters are what we now

call sourdough starters. These are not pure yeast cultures but

mixtures of yeast and bacteria, usually lactobacilli bacteria, the

kind we associate with yogurt or healthy digestion. Yeast eats sugar

and releases carbon dioxide which gives the `rise' to bread dough.

But by itself yeast will not break down the starches in flour. This

is why bread recipes call for a little sugar or honey. You need sugar

to feed the yeast. Modern commercial flour often has some malt added;

this releases sugar from the flour. Before sugar and malt, bakers

relied on sourdough starters.

The yeast and bacteria in sourdough live in a happy relationship. The

bacteria digest the flour releasing sugar which the yeast eat,

releasing carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is trapped in the

protein strands formed by the gluten proteins in the flour causing

otherwise heavy and dense dough to become spongy and light. When the

bread bakes in a hot oven, these bubbles of trapped gas and moisture

expand rapidly causing the bread dough to become even more airy. The

lactic acid and other chemicals produced by the bacteria give the

finished bread their particular sour flavors. Variations in the

bacteria species used account for the different flavors of various

sour dough breads.

While bakers made bread using sourdough starters for close to ten

thousand years, it is only in the last hundred or so years that they

have used purified yeast. Having ready made pure yeast reduces the

time it takes to make bread and results in a mild (some would say

bland) tasting bread.

During these last hundred years, celiac disease has appeared in our

medical texts. Of course, it may have been around much longer, but

curiously, there is little mention of it. Celiac disease was first

described accurately in the early 1950s by Dr. Willem Karel Dicke, a

Dutch pediatrician, who recognized that the disease is caused by the

ingestion of wheat proteins. This disease appears to be getting more

common. My old Merck Manual from the mid 1980's put the incidence at

about 1 in 1200 people. A recent bakery trade journal puts the

incidence at about 1 in 50. This increased incidence may simply be

greater awareness and a greater likelihood of recognition. Yet one

has to wonder.

There is a fascinating paper on sourdough and celiac disease. Italian

and Irish researchers have found that some lactobacilli bacteria in

sourdough can digest and modify the gluten proteins in flour to the

extent that a person with celiac disease may be able to eat them

without ill effect.

la di Cagno and her colleagues set out to produce a bread well

tolerated by people with celiac disease. They selected specific

sourdough bacteria that were especially good at breaking down the

chemical bonds in wheat gluten that trigger the celiac immune

reaction in people with the disease. They were able to show

experimentally that fermentation with these specific lactobacilli

completely inactivated the particular peptides that cause the

reactions. The researchers then baked sourdough breads using a

mixture of wheat, oat, millet, and buckwheat flours. After 24 hours

of fermentation, wheat gliadins were almost totally broken down. When

tested they had less than 1/250 the action of proteins from bread

dough made with baker's yeast.

The researchers then baked two types of bread, one made with baker's

yeast and the other with this special lactobacilli bacteria. The

researcher fed their bread in a double-blinded fashion to 17 patients

with celiac disease. Thirteen of the 17 patients showed a " marked

alteration of intestinal permeability after ingestion of baker's

yeast bread. " That is a fancy way of saying it messed up their guts.

However, when fed the sourdough bread, the same 13 patients had no

measurable changes in their gut permeability. In other words, the

sourdough bread didn't bother them.

" 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. "

This information of course raises the question whether part of the

increased incidence in celiac disease is just the result of the

decreased use of sourdoughs to bake bread. Replacing sourdough with

commercial yeast probably has increased the exposure of people to

celiac triggering proteins that now remain undigested.

Personally I love the flavor of a well made sourdough bread and over

the last 35 years have obtained, used and then lost sourdough

starters beyond count. Some have produced delicious breads, some not.

Sourdough from different parts of the world have distinctly different

flavors because they have different strains of lactobacilli bacteria

and yeast both of which produce flavor. A loaf of San Francisco

sourdough tastes different than a German sourdough. Some of these

starters have been in continuous use for hundreds of years. The

bacteria and yeast have evolved together adapting to their symbiotic

relationship and producing distinct flavors. If they don't taste

good, they are discarded. The good tasting starters are preserved and

treated like family heirlooms.

Homemade sourdough bread:

You can find instructions posted on the internet for making your own

sourdough starter; typically this involves capturing wild yeasts from

musty grape skins and bacteria from either rye flour or yogurt. Such

starters often lack the `mellow' flavor of a long used starter. My

suggestion is ignore these homemade starters and get an `established'

starter. One website, Sourdough International, sells a dozen or so

distinctly different sourdough `starters' which have been collected

from all over the world. http://www.sourdo.com/culture.htm

Up until Passover curtailed my baking experiments, I have been using

Carl's 1843 Oregon Trail sourdough starter. Ancestors of the late

Carl Griffith's apparently brought this starter to Oregon in 1843 in

their covered wagon. While alive, Carl Griffith mailed sourdough

starters free to anyone who requested them. When he passed away in

2000, his ex-wife continued the tradition until her death in 2003.

Now their friends continue the tradition of sending out free

sourdough. See: http://home.att.net/~carlsfriends/

They don't charge anything, asking only a self-addressed postpaid

envelope. I have found it very reliable, easy to work with and of

mild flavor. If you like your sourdough bread to taste sour, you may

not be as happy with this one. If you are interested in making

breads that don't have the sour tang, than this one is ideal.

Yet another source for a sourdough starter with instructions for use:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=27634

All of these websites offer plenty of recipes to use in baking bread

so I won't detail recipes here. One trick that I learned recently

from Cooks Illustrated magazine is to refrigerate the shaped loafs

overnight before letting them rise the final time. Admittedly there

is never enough room in the refrigerator for these loaves, doing so

allows the bread time to develop a stronger more intense flavor.

It is almost impossible to make a decent bread our of just rye flour

using baker's yeast alone. The protein structure of rye flour will

not trap air bubbles from the yeast and most attempts will produce a

loaf similar in consistency to a brick. Fermentation of rye flour

with lactobacilli though changes the protein structure so that it

will trap air and 100% rye flour sourdough breads can be quite good.

Dimmers, a wholesale bakery here in Denver , makes an excellent 100%

rye loaf that is available at select stores in town. You can call

them at and ask which stores near you carry it.

Although Matzo may be called, `the bread of our affliction' it

doesn't taste all that bad and eating it a week or so each year isn't

that great a hardship. Still, come next week, I'll have a new batch

of sourdough fermenting in the kitchen.

Raffaella Di Cagno et al. Sourdough Bread Made from Wheat and

Nontoxic Flours and Started with Selected Lactobacilli Is Tolerated

in Celiac Sprue Patients. Applied and Environmental Microbiology,

February 2004, p. 1088-1096, Vol. 70, No. 2

[Guest guest]

At 11:52 AM 11/4/2008, you wrote:

This is similar to what we are

doing with our yogurt - letting the lactobacillus acidophilous work on

the lactose to digest it into a monosaccharide so it won't feed anything

else (except us) once we ingest it. I'd hate for someone to get ill from

trying this, but on the other hand, it fits in with the logic if of the

SCD.

Actually, it does, but I think that this would not be an experiment to

try until one is at least a year symptom-free following strict

SCD.

I have a recipe kicking around which uses yogurt and honey instead of

sugar and milk for the bread dough. As I remember, I used to have less

trouble with that bread than with any other. Perhaps when I'm healed,

I'll consider trying it again.

—

Marilyn

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Undiagnosed IBS since 1976, SCD since 2001

Darn Good SCD Cook

No Human Children

Shadow & Sunny Longhair Dachshund

[Guest guest]

My husband has UC and found that if he ate SemiFreddis sourdough

french bread (from a company in Berkeley), his symptoms improved

somewhat (this was before the diet). He's interested in this, so we

may give it a try and see how he does.

> >This is similar to what we are doing with our

> >yogurt - letting the lactobacillus acidophilous

> >work on the lactose to digest it into a

> >monosaccharide so it won't feed anything else

> >(except us) once we ingest it. I'd hate for

> >someone to get ill from trying this, but on the

> >other hand, it fits in with the logic if of the SCD.

>

> Actually, it does, but I think that this would

> not be an experiment to try until one is at least

> a year symptom-free following strict SCD.

>

> I have a recipe kicking around which uses yogurt

> and honey instead of sugar and milk for the bread

> dough. As I remember, I used to have less trouble

> with that bread than with any other. Perhaps when

> I'm healed, I'll consider trying it again.

>

>

> — Marilyn

> New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

> Undiagnosed IBS since 1976, SCD since 2001

> Darn Good SCD Cook

> No Human Children

> Shadow & Sunny Longhair Dachshund

>