The most important health benefits of sourdough bread

Figure 1: Composition of a grain of wheat (Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707740/)

Figure 1. shows the components of the wheat grain. The aleurone layer of the bran is rich in valuable substances such as fats, antioxidants, vitamins, micro- and macronutrients. In this respect, it is even more valuable. Bran provides a large amount of Dietary fibrewhich is why bread made from wholemeal flour has a higher fibre content. Bran is not a high-quality dietary fibre, especially not a water-soluble, fermentable fibre that is necessary for feeding beneficial intestinal bacteria.

90 % of the fungal toxins in cereals are found in the bran. The data show that 10-30 % of the DON fungal toxin content of the grain passes into the white flour during milling. However, the bran is the fraction in which the fungal toxin can be present up to ten times the original value of the wheat grain, i.e. if wheat with 0.5 ppm DON is milled, the DON content in the bran fraction can be up to 3-5 ppm.

White flour, which is made from the same wheat, contains only 10 % of the fungal toxin compared to wholemeal flour. The worst breads or rolls in terms of fungal toxins are bran breads or rolls. This is particularly important in wet years.

Systemic and local (absorbable) pesticides accumulate in the husk, so wholemeal flour should also be avoided.

Leaky gut syndrome and wholemeal bread

Wheat germ (with its content of vitamins, minerals, lipids and antioxidants) would certainly make bread more valuable if it did not contain wheat germ agglutinin protein (WGA protein). This is the plant lectin antigen, an inflammation-promoting substance. When its presence in the gut is associated with leaky gut syndrome, it is a food with the antigenic property of causing an inflammatory response. Autoimmune disease to trigger.

The germ also accumulates pesticides. The biological value of wheat germ is proven by chemical analyses, but more important is the structure in which these compounds occur in the plant. If they are present in the form of lectins or other forms with antigenic properties, they should be avoided!

Even foods and raw materials with good nutritional value should be re-evaluated if they are negatively affected by human activities. There are many such effects in foods. One example is lecithin, a biologically very valuable component of bread additives. However, if the lecithin is derived from GM soya, there is a risk.

Bread In Vivo and In Vitro

A big mistake in today's food assessment is to prioritise chemical test results over everything else.

In the human body, the bread is not assessed "in vitro" (its behaviour in the test tube) on the basis of the chemical test, but "in vivo" (its behaviour in the living organism).

The English biologist Professor Harry Smith and his colleagues drew attention to the importance of "in vivo" studies in the mid-1950s. In many cases, "in vivo" and "in vitro" do not lead to the same result in biology.

In vivo veritas - the truth lies in the living!

If you compare white flour with wholemeal flour, there is nothing in favour of bread made from wholemeal flour from a health perspective. Leaky gut syndrome and the WGA protein together can trigger a number of autoimmune diseases.

The milling industry's only profit interest in the utilisation of wholemeal flour is that wholemeal flour can be sold at flour prices for bran and wheat germ.

Sourdough bread and gluten intolerance

Until the 1990s, most people had never heard of gluten intolerance. In the first half of the 20th century and in the centuries before, bread and pasta were the staple foods for the majority of the population.

A hundred years ago, people ate five times as much bread as they do today. Most wheat varieties contained 30 to 40 % more gluten than today's varieties, but people were not gluten intolerant.

Gluten sensitivity is something we don't understand when we look at the statistics, because our ancestors who lived before us and had the same genetic make-up as us must have been affected by gluten sensitivity for 10-15 generations continuously, as bread consumption was about five times higher than it is today.

But there was no problem! Why is that?

The theory that modified wheat varieties could be the cause of gluten sensitivity is then put forward in a completely unscientific manner.

Bread quality and gluten content

The most important factor for bread quality is the gluten content. The higher the gluten content, the better the dough can be kneaded, kneaded, stretched and moulded and the lighter, softer and more tender the bread will be.

In the first six decades of the 20th century, the world-famous Hungarian wheat varieties produced the best quality flour in the world. The Bánkúti 1201 and Bánkúti 1205 varieties bred by László Baross were the best quality wheat varieties and were grown on 80-85 % of the country's land. In the 1960s, the Bánkúti varieties were replaced by the Soviet Bezostaya wheat varieties due to the emphasis on mass production, machine harvestability and other considerations.

The Bánkúti 1201 variety had a chicory moisture content of 49.45 % and a dry chicory content of 17.23 %. If a wheat today has a chicory moisture content of 28%, it is already suitable for wheat milling, i.e. bread production, according to common practice. Wheat flour in milling quality, which is obtained from the varieties suitable for bread flour today, has an average wet gluten content of 30-35% and a dry gluten content of 10-12%.

So where is the error if today's wheat contains about 30-40% less gluten?

Put simply, the fault lies in the fact that our mothers and grandmothers baked bread from wheat with sourdough despite the very high gluten content, so that nobody suffered from gluten intolerance despite the very high gluten content.

The role of FODAMP and WGA protein

To understand the problem, we need to clarify the concepts and effects of gluten, FODMAP and WGA protein (wheat germ agglutinin protein) as lectins in bread flour.

The wheat grain consists of three parts: The endosperm, husk and aleurone layer. The endosperm is the nutritive tissue, the endosperm contains gluten and FODMAP. The wheat germ, which contains the kernel and the hull, is the carrier of the protein WGA.

White bread flour essentially consists of the endosperm, which is made up of starch and gluten. White bread flour contains two dangerous substances, gluten and FODMAP.

Gluten consists of two parts, glutenin and gliadin. These two proteins are linked together by a disulphide bridge. The gluten proteins in wheat flour, mainly prolamins and gliadins, have a strong antigenic potential. Using a computer-assisted "in silico" modelling technique, it was possible to show that more than 60 immunogenic peptides are present in the gluten of the Triticum species. These can be degraded by protease and pyratase enzymes produced by sourdough fungi (Saccharomyces exiguus, C. holmii, Issatchenkia orientalis, C. krusei, Aspergillus niger and A. oryzae). The efficiency of fermentative degradation is increased by various species and strains of Lactobacillus bacteria, which carry out secondary hydrolysis with their protease systems.

No immune reaction to gluten in sourdough bread

The peptides produced during fermentation have neither epitopes nor antigenic determinants, so that they are not recognised as antigens by the immune system and do not trigger a defence reaction. The fermented gluten has no inflammatory effect. There is therefore no immunogenic recognition and coeliac disease cannot develop. 

Gluten not only damages the intestinal mucosa and causes leaky gut syndrome. If it enters the bloodstream, it activates antigen-presenting cells (macrophages) and triggers an immune reaction in the body.

Unfermented gluten not only damages the intestinal mucosa and causes leaky gut syndrome. If it enters the bloodstream, it activates antigen-presenting cells (macrophages) and triggers an immune reaction in the body.

What is FODMAP?

FODMAP is a group of fermentable carbohydrates. The group includes (F)fermentable (O)oligosaccharides, (D)disaccharides, (M)monosaccharides (A) and (P)polyols (sugar alcohols).

Fermentable carbohydrates cannot be broken down by our digestive enzymes, but are fermented by bacteria. FODMAPs are a problem for people who suffer from SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth).

Normally there are about 10 bacteria per 1 ml of intestinal contents in the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine, and in the subsequent section, the jejunum. The last part of the small intestine is the ileum. When the intestine is functioning optimally, the ileum contains around 1,000 to 100,000 bacteria per ml.

Compared to the large intestine, whose intestinal contents contain up to 100 billion bacteria per ml, the intestinal flora in the small intestine is relatively low under normal conditions.

Another problem is that in SIBO there are types of bacteria in the small intestine that should not be there. They ferment the FODMAP components of the bread, inhibit nutrient absorption and digestion and cause quite a mess in the small intestine.

SIBO is also closely associated with lactose intolerance. Without a sufficient amount of the enzyme lactase, lactose (a fermentable disaccharide in milk) cannot be digested and must therefore be processed by the bacteria in the large intestine. Another earlier study showed that SIBO is also associated with malabsorption of fructose and sorbitol. These are also FODMAPs.

In people with a FODMAP intolerance, certain carbohydrates can be over-fermented, leading to flatulence, bloating, pain, poor digestion and an excessive proliferation of undesirable pathogenic bacterial strains.

About lectins

Lectins are important to know because the lectin of the wheat plant, the so-called wheat germ agglutinin protein, WGA (wheat germ agglutinin), is found in the germ part of the wheat grain.

Lectins are glycoproteins, protein molecules with oligosaccharides on their surface (usually a combination of 3-10 monosaccharides). The oligosaccharide groups "attached" to the proteins have a specific spatial structure that is "read" by the binding sites of the lectins, i.e. specifically recognised by the immune system. Each of these interactions is weak, but according to the principle of "many small ones make the difference", many weak interactions synergistically produce strong effects. Proteins in the antigen-presenting cells of our body, which recognise the carbohydrate code, recognise the harmful and inflammation-causing sugar code and trigger the immune response.

Why do lectins occur in plants?

All plant tissues contain lectins, so we cannot avoid them completely. Lectins are a self-defence system that plants have developed to harm the "enemies" that eat them. Lectins are mainly found in the reproductive fluids of plants, including plant seeds.

Dr. Árpád PusztaiÁrpád Pusztai, a Hungarian biochemist working in Scotland, is the discoverer of the biological effect of lectins and a world leader in lectin research. Árpád Pusztai was born in Budapest on 8 September 1930. He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in 1953 with a degree in chemistry. After the failure of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, he went to England. He obtained his doctorate in biochemistry at the Lister Institute. For the next 36 years, Pusztai worked at the Rowett Institute, focussing mainly on plant lectins. Together with his wife, Dr Zsuzsa Bardócz, he published more than 270 scientific papers and wrote 3 books. They became internationally recognised lectin experts.

The majority of lectins cannot be denatured or structurally broken down by heat, frying or cooking. Cereal lectins, for example, are resistant to human digestive juices.

The lectins in our food are indigestible to us, and some lectins have been scientifically proven to cause severe intestinal toxicity and Autoimmune problems cause.

The best way to break down lectins is through fermentation. Bacteria and fungi are used to break down the "sugar codes" encoded by oligosaccharides, which cause inflammation and damage human and animal cells.

With sourdough bread, for example, this happens during fermentation, which takes 8 to 16 hours.

Wheat lectin is the agglutinin protein of the wheat germ

Interestingly, the wheat germ agglutinin protein is also used as an anti-inflammatory in genetically modified plants. The WGA protein "implanted" in GM plants is the anti-inflammatory agent that the GM plant uses to defend itself against pests.

Coeliac disease and sourdough bread

Coeliac disease does not develop if you eat sourdough bread all your life. Sourdough is fermented yeast. Sourdough is a beneficial activity of yeasts and homo- and heterofermentative lactic acid and acetic acid bacteria. The enzymatic digestion of bread flour is carried out by the carbohydrate-digesting enzymes amylase, protease and pyratase, the protein-digesting enzymes of yeasts. The oligosaccharides of the WGA protein and the oligo- and disaccharides of the FODMAP are broken down into monosaccharides by the carbohydrate-degrading enzymes of amylase in the sourdough. Bacterial activity converts the monosaccharides into alcohol by alcoholic fermentation, followed by lactic acid, acetic acid and carbon dioxide by homo- or heterofermentative bacteria. Some of the carbon dioxide acidifies the bread, while some is removed during the leavening process. The resulting organic acids preserve the bread.

During the sourdough process, the flour loses 1.2 to 2.7 % of its own weight through fermentation. At the same time, the fermentation effect of the fungi and bacteria in the sourdough makes the bread flour more digestible and cancels out its pro-inflammatory effect.

Another important phenomenon occurs in sourdough bread as a result of the fermentation activity. The wheat flour acquires an umami flavour, which is mainly due to the high content of glutamate amino acids in the gluten. This is how sourdough bread becomes flavourful through natural fermentation. The flavour of modern bread is created by flavour enhancers.

Bread made from wheat flour baked with yeast takes 8 to 10 hours to rise, whereas rye flour takes 16 hours. Traditional bread baking depends on good sourdough, kneading (loosening) and time.

The fungi and bacteria in sourdough work together to support and complement each other. They also produce substances that prevent harmful bacteria from multiplying in the sourdough. In this way, the microbiological process in the dough is controlled. Essentially, these are beneficial antibiotics. These gut-friendly antibiotics are produced by heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria in sourdough bread. After baking, these gut-friendly antibiotics are absorbed into the gut, where they help to maintain a healthy microbiome.

The ascorbic acid contained in the sourdough produces a lot of carbon dioxide when heated, which "acidifies" the bread. The organic acids in the baking agent (lactic acid, acetic acid, propionic acid, tartaric acid, sorbic acid and their derivatives) preserve the bread.

GM soya lecithin in modern bread

The organic acid artificially added to the flour regulates the pH value of the dough so that the baking agent effectively prevents the natural formation of yeast, which can occur in the dough during the short rising time. The softness and machinability of the bread is guaranteed by lecithin, which can be used in unlimited quantities. Lecithin is a very valuable food ingredient. The only big problem is that it is derived from GM soya! With this ingredient we bring the GM soyaGlyphosate-problem* about the addition of bread to our daily diet.

Umami flavour in bread

We know that the umami flavour of sourdough bread comes from the amino acid glutamine, which becomes 'visible' to the taste buds through the fermentation process. The question is what gives the bread its umami flavour.

According to food labelling regulations, flavour enhancers do not have to be labelled on foods. There are more and more studies on the use of the amino acid L-lysine as a flavour enhancer and in bread flour and various pasta products made from wheat flour. The scientific explanation for the use of L-lysine in foods, especially in foods made from wheat flour, is that L-lysine is a good addition to the amino acid composition of wheat flour. According to experts who support this concept, the addition of L-lysine makes foods made from wheat flour more biologically valuable.

According to other opinions, L-lysine is a free amino acid due to the lysine-Arginine-antagonism causes various problems in the body. Among other things, it has negative effects on the circulatory system, blood pressure and immune function.

Hygiene & sourdough bread

The question arises as to how sourdough bread could be stored for 8-10 days without any problems and without mould under the much poorer hygienic conditions of a traditional village damp room with a dirt floor. Today, a loaf of bread would go mouldy within 2-3 days, even though it is stored in a modern kitchen under much better hygienic conditions.

The explanation is simple! Sourdough bread breaks down the sugar that is responsible for the inflammation. Moulds also look for this sugar, but only find it in sourdough bread.

The biggest problem with bread with additives is not that it contains additives, but that fermentation does not take place!

The history of sourdough bread

Our ancestors respected and valued bread. They called it life, God's blessing, the most important food of mankind. It was eaten at almost every meal. Home-baked bread was made from pure wheat flour or a mixture of rye and wheat flour. Its size varied from region to region.

The average weight was 4 to 6 kg, the diameter 25 to 35 cm, the average height 10 to 12 cm for rye bread and 20 to 25 cm for wheat bread.

In the past, bread was baked exclusively by women. The bread was usually kneaded and baked by the farmer's wife herself. Depending on the size of the family and the oven, six to eight loaves were baked every one to two weeks. It usually took 18 to 20 hours to make.

Girls learnt to bake bread at the age of 14-15, and all girls had to learn before they were allowed to marry. Only those who could bake bread were considered girls for sale.

What beer and bread have in common

Beer is not called liquid bread for nothing, because beer is a product of fermentation.

The words "Brewed in accordance with the Purity Law" from 1516 are still emblazoned on the cans and bottles of many German beer brands today.

It stipulates that beer may only contain three ingredients: malt, hops and water.

Yeast bread and sourdough bread

Yeast bread is an intermediate form of sourdough bread and modern bread. The bread is baked with baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) for 2-3 hours. The FODMAPs (sugars) in the bread flour are used to form rising carbon dioxide and preservative organic acids. The maltose cannot be fermented by the fungi and remains in the yeast bread, which reduces the shelf life of the bread.

Homo- and heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria also play a role in the enzymatic conversion of gluten and WGA protein. This means that the degradation of these two particularly risky pro-inflammatory substances is not complete.

GM soya and glyphosate

In 1996, the so-called RR soya bean was authorised in the USA. The soya plant is sprayed two to four times a year. In the last 22 years, the chemical residues of Glyphosate in soya has risen from 0.1 mg/kg to 20.0 mg/kg. In the USA, the limit had to be raised to 40 mg/kg two years ago because the limit of 20.0 mg/kg in soya was exceeded.

There are huge scientific and economic interests at stake, pro and con. GM soya must not be cultivated in Europe! However, through free trade, a considerable amount of feed and food from GM soya enters the European Union.

Some arguments from GMO opponents who are concerned about the future of humanity:

• It kills some of the fungi and bacteria that live in the soil
• The useful Intestinal bacteria are all sensitive to glyphosate. Most harmful gut bacteria do not react to glyphosate, which makes glyphosate one of the most important triggers of gut dysbiosis
• As the central metabolic organ of the liver, it blocks a key enzyme, cytochrome p450, which plays an important role in various hepatic metabolic processes. These include the regulation of hormone balance and the breakdown of xenobiotics (foreign substances such as toxins).

Of course, we ourselves will not be advocating GM soya, because our senior Product developeran agricultural engineer who has been involved in animal husbandry and animal nutrition at home and abroad for 30 years cannot give you a single positive argument!