There's no bread quite like sourdough. In addition to being tasty as a sandwich bread,delicious as sourdough croutons, and even great just toasted with butter, sourdough's production process is decidedly unlike other breads. The starters for sourdough, and the yeasts they're built from, possess unbelievable longevity. In 2019, that longevity was the key to the development of the "oldest" sourdough starter ever -- or at least the oldest yeast ever used by a modern baker.
That year, tech entrepreneur and physicist Seamus Blackley (the co-creator of the original Xbox)decided to make and eat sourdough from yeast that was four and a half millennia old.It's important to note that Blackley didn't make bread using a literal 4500-year-old starter; no such continuous sourdough starters are known to exist. It was, however, made with yeast that in all likelihoodlong predates the founding of Rome, and in fact the yeast itself came from ancient artifacts that had once been used in brewing and bread-making. With the aid of Egyptologist Dr. Serena Love, Blackley secured access to Egyptian pottery from museums in Massachusetts, and with the help of microbiologist Richard Bowman, he was able to extract from them the yeast samples he'd need.
To understand how this was even possible, it's important to understand the science behind a sourdough starter.While most bread comes from commercial yeast packets, sourdough is created from a wild yeast colony consisting of yeast, flour, sugar, and water. Within that colony, the yeast is allowed to do its work slowly, developing a unique flavor as it ferments, which is why every sourdough tastes different.
Unlike century eggs, which despite the name are typically made over a period of months, a sourdough starter can last well over an actual century as long as water and flour is added to it on a bi-weekly basis.In fact, if proper care is taken, itcan last quite literally indefinitely, because yeast itself can theoretically last indefinitely.
This is because yeast that goes dormant is often not actually dead. In the absence of food, yeast can essentially go intosuspended animation, germinating later when it has something to eat. This is exactly what Blackley did using his ancient yeast.It's not 100% clear specifically how old Blackley's yeast was, or how contaminatedthe samples were by environmental factors the pots had been exposed to over time, like dirt and oxygen. Modern growth media, meanwhile, were a no go, killing Blackley's first attempts at a starter -- but historically accurate Emmer flour (a hybrid of Einkorn wheat and wild grass) worked to reactivate the yeast. That discovery eventually allowed Blackley to bake a sourdough loaf with it in August 2019.
Blackley Ultimately Baked The Sourdough Using Ancient Egyptian Techniques
In order to make a completely historically accurate sourdough, he needed not just a starter, but to translate ancient Egyptian baking methods. Using hieroglyphs and other contextual sources, Love cracked the code on how to make it happen. After nurturing the starter and practicing with dozens of loaves, Blackley built his own version of an ancient Egyptian "bedja," a clay pot used for baking. Then he dug a hole and baked it in the ground surrounded by embers -- just like the ancient Egyptians once did.
As I mention in the thread above, the ancient Egyptians of that time period didn't use ovens like we do today. They baked in conical clay pots call "bedja." Here's one we made. I've been practicing for months, baking in a modern oven with bedja so I get can a feel for it. pic.twitter.com/6kAamQGKCi
The end result worked remarkably well. The wildest part is that in both instances -- modern baking and using the bedja -- the sourdough was apparently delicious, with Blackley declaring in his post that it tasted "much sweeter and more rich than the sourdough we are used to."
And here is the result. The scoring is the Hieroglyph representing the "T" sound (Gardiner X1) which is a loaf of bread. The aroma is AMAZING and NEW. It's much sweeter and more rich than the sourdough we are used to. It's a big difference. After this cools we will taste! pic.twitter.com/sYCJ8uP1oj
It took quite a lot of effort and the miracles of both modern science and historical study, but Blackley successfully made sourdough out of the oldest yeast any modern baker had ever used. Sadly, he never made any plans to produce and market it for the rest of us.
Sourdough baking's history dates back to the ancient Egyptians — and interestingly, a man named Seamus Blackley, alongside a team of archaeology and microbiology experts, managed to revive 4,500-year-old yeast microbes from ancient Egyptian bread-making vessels housed in a Boston museum.
Vivian Woods is selling a sourdough starter that's got its roots in ancient Egypt. “It's 4,500 years old, from the Egyptian pyramids. They've gone in and done excavations, and they were able to actually find some clay pots from the very first bakeries,” Vivian said.
The World's 'Oldest' Sourdough Starter Was Made With 4,500-Year-Old Yeast. There's no bread quite like sourdough. In addition to being tasty as a sandwich bread, delicious as sourdough croutons, and even great just toasted with butter, sourdough's production process is decidedly unlike other breads.
Seamus Blackley shared on Twitter that he had baked bread with a 4,500-year-old microbial combination of yeast and bacteria. With the help of Dr. Serena Love, an Egyptologist, and microbiologist Richard Bowman, Blackley literally brought history to life.
There are many theories as to how they first discovered it, but we can assume that it was by accident. It's thought that the Egyptian people left some out and some of the wild yeast spores in the air mixed with the dough, which caused it to rise and create sourdough bread as we know it.
Keep feeding your starter, and you'll see normal activity (bubbles) return in a few days. If your starter has a bit of dark liquid on top, it's not dead! It simply means it's hungry and that it's time to feed it. Unless your starter has a pink or orange hue or is beginning to mold, you probably haven't killed it yet.
Ideally, you don't want to allow sourdough bread to cold ferment for longer than 72 hours. Even up to 48 hours, you do risk some loss of gluten structure unless you manipulate the amount of starter down.
Unlike baker's yeast, sourdough starter is naturally occurring and is a lot more volatile and unpredictable than its commercially produced counterpart. And one of the main differences to commercial yeast, is that the yeast in your sourdough starter live in a symbiotic relationship with the lactic acid bacteria.
For many folks, the renewed interest in sourdough is health-related. Some are going even further than baking their own bread: They're milling their own flour from whole wheat berries, too.
Some early miners were even known to sleep with starters in their pockets on cold nights so that the yeasts and bacteria didn't freeze to death—giving the prospectors a somewhat sour smell, which may also be part of the reason they earned the sourdough nickname.
Essentially making a sourdough starter is not an overly difficult process, but it does require a commitment of time and patience, as well as some dedicated equipment. Sometimes there are factors which mean making sourdough starter could be difficult. Perhaps you're working long hours or go out of town regularly.
The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?
Your sourdough starter is the foundation of baking sourdough bread. Through proper maintenance and a little attention, it can last indefinitely and provide you with countless healthy and delicious loaves of bread.
I wouldn't go more than 24 hours without feeding a very young sourdough starter (it may survive longer than this unfed however you will leave it open to the risk of mold). Mature sourdough starter aged more than 6 months old should be able to survive unfed on the counter for around 3-4 days without any risk of mold.
Seamus Blackley – a baking hobbyist who is best known, oddly enough, as one of the inventors of the Xbox – recently was able to whip of a loaf of sourdough bread using ancient yeast from around 2,500 B.C.
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