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Glycemic index with sourdough plus commercial yeast

April 3, 2010 - 9:14am
Carl Bergensis's picture
Carl Bergensis

Glycemic index with sourdough plus commercial yeast

I have a recipe that uses a teaspoon of instant yeast in addition to the starter. Will I still get the same lower glycemic index characteristic of sourdoughs?

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dsoleil's picture
dsoleil
Apr 4 2010 - 5:22pm

Sounds like you might be concerned with diabetes.  Here's a great book that explains a lot about food:

 

http://www.nealbarnard.org/diabetes_book.htm

Ho Dough's picture
Ho Dough
Apr 9 2010 - 9:08am

maltose (môl'tōs) or malt sugar, crystalline disaccharide (see carbohydrate). It has the same empirical formula (C12H22O11) as sucrose and lactose but differs from both in structure (see isomer). Maltose is produced from starch by hydrolysis in the presence of diastase, an enzyme present in malt. Maltose is hydrolyzed to glucose by maltase, an enzyme present in yeast; the glucose thus formed may be fermented by another enzyme in yeast to produce ethanol. Maltose is important in the brewing of beer. It is an easily digested food.

 

Don't get excited......I'm only hypothesizing. I've made long fermentation, no knead breads using just commercial bread yeast. Mix it up, follow that with an 18 hour fermenation at room temps, followed by shaping and baking. Just simple flour, water, salt, yeast...very little yeast. Less than 1/4 tsp for a full loaf. I'm told commercial yeasts do have the ability to break down and digest maltose. It must, it works. Takes a long time to get started, but by 18 hours the yeasts have pretty much consumed what starch and sugar there is. A stretch and fold exposes what starches and sugars are left.....enough to get a rise in 2 hours. It will work, but isn't sour.

By contrast, I've read that in sourdough, it is the bacteria that breaks down the maltose to the fermentable sugars, which the compatible yeasts ferment to CO2 and alcohols. Sour comes from the byproduct of the bacteria..mainly acetic acid.

Just this week I also tried a combination of the two. I simply added 2 teaspoons of very ripe starter to the commerical yeast powered bread dough. The fermentation process still worked great and it produced a wonderful sour flavor.

As for it's GI, I don't have a way to test my blood sugar levels. Wish I did. The promise of a low GI bread is the main reason I'm working with sourdough. That plus it's ten times better tasting than any commercial bread you can buy.