Chickpea sourdough culture

Doing some research on the impact of sourdough processes and long slow fermentation on the digestibility and bio-availability of nutrients. Came across this interesting article which describes a method for creating a chickpea sourdough culture. I haven't tried it yet - they were using it to improve the keeping qualities and nutritional level of wheat bread, but I'll try it with other gluten free flours.

Extracts on article about chickpea sourdough accessed Oct 26 2010

“The use of sourdough in bread making contributes to the production of flavor compounds in bread. Additionally, it gives bread better keeping properties (Gobbetti et al. 1995; Collar 1996; Martinez-Anaya 1996; Martinez- Anaya et al. 1998; Corsetti et al. 2000; Katina et al. 2004; Hansen and Schieberle 2005). Sourdoughs are becoming important as consumers move away from pan breads to specialty products. Also, sourdough may stabilize or increase the levels of bioactive compounds and also may be useful in the production of breads with slow starch digestibility and hence low glycemic responses (Katina et al. 2005). Sourdough prepared from chickpea and added to durum wheat flour is a traditional way to prepare good-quality bread from durum wheat flour alone.”

“Preparation of the Chickpea Sourdough

Sixty grams of chickpea seeds were crushed in a pestle and mortar, and the fine fragments were removed by sieving through a sieve with a 1.5 mm slot width. The coarse fragments were put together with 180 mL of hot water in a water bath at 35C. Fine fragments of chickpea should be avoided because they are carried away with the bubbles and transferred into the dough. The mixture was left overnight at a constant temperature of 35C and then small bubbles started making their appearance – possibly due to fermentation. The bubbles were collected and mixed with flour and water at 35C. The collecting and mixing procedure was continued as long as bubbles were produced (about 2 h). The total amount of flour used was 60 g, while the water used was approxi- mately 50 mL, plus the liquid (about 10 mL), carried away with the bubbles.

The dough was preserved at a temperature of 30–34C until it doubled in volume. This mixture was used as the chickpea sourdough and was adequate to ferment 240 g of durum wheat flour.”

BREAD MAKING OF DURUM WHEAT WITH CHICKPEA SOURDOUGH OR COMPRESSED BAKER’S YEAST

PETROS KEFALAS1, SAVAS KOTZAMANIDIS2, DIMITRIOS SABANIS3, ANASTASIA YUPSANI3, LIDA-AIKATERINI KEFALA1, ATHANASIOS KOKKALIS1 and TRAIANOS YUPSANIS3,4

1Department of Nutrition and Dietetics Faculty of Food Technology and Nutrition Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki PO Box 141 GR, 57400 Sindos, Greece

2National Agricultural Research Foundation Cereal Institute PO Box 60411, 57001 Thermi, Greece

3Laboratory of Biochemistry School of Chemistry Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece

Received for Publication October 8, 2007 Accepted for Publication July 18, 2008