Study of sourdough functionality in bread making

Bread is arguably one of the most important food products in the human daily diet. In the bread space, sourdough-type breads take up a unique position. Sourdoughs represent either spontaneously fermented flour/water mixtures or lactic acid bacterial starter culture-initiated flour/water mixtures (industrial sourdoughs). This project aims at understanding how microbial community choice and processing can be used to increase both nutritional and organoleptic quality of sourdough-type bread. Bread doughs will be prepared with state-of-the-art and the above-mentioned new sourdoughs with and without the addition of bakers’ yeast. The impact of the sourdough fermentation products and fermentation metabolites on the bread dough formation and baked breads produced thereof will be assessed to fully understand the impact of sourdough on dough and bread composition and characteristics.