The Sourdough Compendium

You’ve probably heard that keeping a sourdough starter alive is part of the “authentic experience.” But for most people, it’s also the reason they give up, or never try in the first place.  Let’s talk about why sourdough starters are elusive, and consider an easier way to bake sourdough. 

Most people think the only real difference between yeasted bread and sourdough is the tangy flavor. But as Michael Pollan writes in Cooked (there's a great episode on his Cooked Netflix show as well, "Air"), fermentation doesn’t just add flavor, it transforms food at a structural and nutritional level. That transformation is the reason sourdough has remained a timeless practice, and why so many bakers today continue to dive into sourdough baking with no turning back. The Problem: If Yeast Bread Works, Why Bother With Sourdough? When commercial yeast arrived in the late 19th century, it changed everything. For the first time, bakers had a predictable, fast, shelf-stable leavening they could rely on every single day. It was a genuine breakthrough: it freed people from managing wild cultures and suddenly made breadmaking dramatically more consistent. It also made it faster. By controlling how much yeast went into the dough, busy home bakers could get a loaf on the table within a couple of hours — a small miracle compared to the long, unpredictable ferments of the past.  With that level of convenience, it’s no surprise most home bakers assume commercial yeast delivers everything needed to make bread. It’s cheap, it’s in every supermarket, and it inflates dough on command. Sourdough, by comparison, looks like an unnecessary hassle: you need a starter, you have to source or create it, learn to use it, maintain it — and that’s before you even start baking.  Once the bread comes out of the oven, a sourdough loaf can look similar to a yeasted one, just slightly tangier. To make things more confusing, some people don’t like “sour bread,” and naturally reach for the sweeter profile of commercial-yeast loaves (plot twist: sourdough doesn’t have to be sour, but that’s for another time). So at a surface level, sourdough seems more complicated and time consuming, and just results in a more sour loaf. But recent research tells a very different story, one that confirms what sourdough bakers have intuitively known for generations. Sourdough isn’t just another flavor profile; it delivers measurable benefits to digestion, nutrient absorption, gut health, and blood sugar regulation that commercial yeast simply can’t match.  And as modern studies on ultra-processed foods continue to reveal the downstream effects of shortcuts in our food system, we’re beginning to see that commercial yeast, while an important innovation in its time, also stripped bread of many qualities that made it deeply nourishing in the first place. What Actually Makes Sourdough Different What sets sourdough apart is that it isn’t fermented by yeast alone. It uses yeast alongside lactic acid bacteria (LAB), and those bacteria bring a whole set of abilities that commercial yeast simply doesn’t have.  LABs create mild acidity, break down complex nutrients, and drive the deeper changes we associate with true fermentation. By the way, LABs are also used in making yogurt, cheese, salami, pickles, and many other foods. In Cooked, Michael Pollan explains that during fermentation microbes don’t just add flavor — they transform food into something more digestible, more nourishing, and more stable. When bread is made with yeast alone, a big part of that fermentation system is missing. Across cultures, we see this same pattern in everyday foods: vinegar in dressings, lemon and lime in marinades, yogurt and buttermilk in baking, tomatoes in stews. Long before people understood the science, they instinctively leaned on acidity and fermentation because it made their food taste better, last longer, and keep them healthy. Sourdough follows that same logic. The Benefits of Sourdough Adding LABs to dough fermentation doesn’t just change flavor, it changes how the dough behaves and how our bodies respond to it. Fermenting with yeast alone is like watering a plant that's mostly in the shade - it will grow, but it will never reach its full strength or complexity. Some of these benefits have been obvious to bakers for generations, and some are only now being confirmed by modern research. What we’re learning is that commercial yeast, while incredibly useful in its time, was ultimately a shortcut that left behind many of the natural advantages of full fermentation. Sourdough brings those advantages back. Here are the benefits supported by both intuition and science: Better flavor: sourdough fermentation creates a deeper, more layered taste than yeast alone ever can. And it doesn’t have to be sour! Just ask Chad Robertson of the famed Tartine Bakery. Easier to digest: Because sourdough fermentation (driven by LABs) breaks down more of the harder-to-digest parts of wheat, compared to yeast, many people report feeling less heavy or sluggish afterward and generally more comfortable compared to yeast-only bread. Better absorption: the acidity from sourdough fermentation helps unlock nutrients and improve how the body uses them. Better for blood sugar: Compared to yeast-only bread, sourdough’s acidity slows how quickly the stomach empties and how fast the body processes the bread’s starches, resulting in a steadier blood-sugar response. More supportive of gut health: Studies suggest that because sourdough is more thoroughly broken down and easier to digest, it tends to support a healthier gut environment than yeast-only bread Naturally longer shelf life: Mild acidity keeps the loaf fresher without additives. These are just some of the measurable effects of sourdough, validated by modern studies across food science, nutrition, and microbiology. And they explain why sourdough bakers keep coming back: the fermentation does something no amount of commercial yeast can replicate. The Benefits of Sourdough, Now More Accessible Than Ever At this point, the natural objection is: “These benefits sound great, but I don’t have time to babysit and feed a starter twice a day just to make one loaf.” The good news is that sourdough fermentation is far more accessible than it used to be. You don’t need to keep a live starter on your counter or remember a feeding schedule. Freeze-dried cultures now give you the same convenience people love about commercial yeast — simple, predictable, ready when you are — but with LABs included, so you get the full sourdough fermentation you’ve just read about. We covered this in detail in our other article about whether starters need to be complicated (they don’t). Read our article here, or experience the difference for yourself with one of our Maison Fare sourdough breadmaking kits.

You want to bake sourdough. Maybe you think it tastes great, maybe you’re sold on the benefits of sourdough bread over other types, or maybe it just sounds like a fun new skill to learn.  You’ve read the recipes. Watched the videos. Spoken to friends. You know the first step: get a healthy, active sourdough starter. Getting Started You quickly learn that making one from scratch is slow and somewhat complicated. You have to measure and feed it every day. There are conflicting articles about feeding ratios, hydration levels, timing. Not only that, but if you get busy with life, your starter may die or not peak at the time you want to bake, so then you have to go back to square one.  And that’s all before you can even start making the dough for a loaf of bread! It’s easy to get stuck or second-guess the whole thing. So it’s understandable why so many home bakers look for ways to make this easier. Since many of us shop online, it seems obvious to at least try typing “sourdough starter” into a shopping website to see what comes up. The result? Dehydrated starters. They claim to offer a faster way to get to the part we actually want: making bread.  It’s true - with a dehydrated starter, you will eventually get something that can work. But is it easier and faster?  At Maison Fare, our expert baking team firmly believes in dehydrated starters as a great way to make sourdough bread, but the nuance is that the type you get matters greatly. So we’re here to explain why not all of them work like they say they do, and how to make sure you get the right kind.  What a Starter Actually Is (And Why That Matters) A sourdough starter isn’t magic. They’ve existed for thousands of years. Essentially, it’s a maintained, living culture of 2 micro organisms: Yeast microbes that produce gas (for rise) Lactic acid bacteria that contribute acid (for flavor and other benefits).  That’s it. The type of yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) and bacteria (lactobacilli) that exists in sourdough starters is also found in kombucha, beer, cheese, and lots of other fermented foods. Those microbes cannot be seen but they are present in our gardens, within the flour we buy, on our skin, and in the air. Creating or obtaining a starter is simply a matter of establishing a large enough concentration of these microbes in a controlled environment. So when you’re looking to purchase a starter, what you’re really looking for is a fast, reliable way to get the necessary live microbes (yeast and lactic acid bacteria) into your dough.   Why Buying a Starter Makes Sense, In Theory Trying to make a starter from scratch can feel overwhelming. It’s a lot of work to put in before you can even start the actual bread recipe, which has a bunch more steps that take even more time and attention.  It’s like wanting to pick fresh oranges from your backyard but starting from seed, which takes years, instead of planting a young tree from the nursery that could bear fruit the same season (but still requires plenty of gardening skill to succeed!).  Similar to buying a tree at a nursery instead of seeds, the idea of buying a starter that’s already established makes total sense. You might know someone with a live starter, or maybe you can get one from a local shop or bakery. You can even order one online but it has to be shipped carefully and you have to be sure to receive it right away; it can literally die during transit. But even if you get the perfect live starter, you typically need to spend time reviving and acclimating it to your kitchen, and you have to keep feeding it until you’re ready to bake.  That’s why shelf-stable options are so appealing. They’re light, affordable, and supposedly simple. That’s where dehydrated sourdough starters come in. But not all dehydrated starters are created equal. There are 2 types:   Heat Dried Starters: a Hot Mess When people say “dehydrated starter,” they usually mean heat-dried starter - flour mixed with wild culture that’s been dried with warm air, either in a home kitchen or a commercial facility. Heat drying is a common way to preserve sourdough starter. The idea is that you use low temperature to remove the water from the starter and put the yeast and lactic acid bacteria into a dormant state. The problem is - heat drying is very unpredictable. Heat drying exposes sourdough cultures to prolonged warm temperatures, which can stress or kill off sensitive yeast and bacteria, especially if the process isn’t tightly controlled. In one study comparing drying methods, oven-dried sourdough showed a 1.6 log reduction in lactic acid bacteria for wild cultures, meaning over 95% of the original microbes didn’t survive.1 Here’s a twist - when you re-activate a starter, you’re feeding it with fresh flour and water, which also naturally contain yeast and lactic acid bacteria in your environment. So now, if your dehydrated starter is weak, the new microbes you just added will win over the barely-alive dormant ones in the dehydrated starter, and over the next 5 days you are just creating a new starter rather than reviving one.  In plain terms: often, you’re still building a starter from scratch, just with a story attached. Dehydrated Starter Type #2: Freeze Dried For commercial freeze-dried starter cultures, individual strains of yeast and bacteria are grown separately using time-tested fermentation techniques, then freeze-dried under tightly controlled conditions. This method preserves a high concentration of viable microbes without the variability that comes from batch-to-batch starter changes, offering a more reliable foundation for baking. Every batch is lab-tested for viable yeast and bacteria cell counts, ensuring it activates predictably and consistently. But the biggest difference isn’t just how freeze-dried starters are made, it’s how many live microbes they contain. Remember that with a heat dried starter, a bunch of microbes have died during the drying, which opens the door to competition from whatever you’re feeding it with. When you mix a freeze-dried starter with flour and water, the microbes in the culture outnumber everything else by a wide margin. They’re alive, active, and ready to go, far more potent than whatever wild yeast or bacteria might be floating in the air or hiding in your flour. That means there’s no real competition. The original culture takes hold immediately and starts doing its job. The result? There’s no need to build a starter over several days. Once you wake up those microbes (which takes a day or less, not multiple days), you can skip straight to baking. Can You Create and Maintain a “Wild” Starter From a Dehydrated Starter? For both freeze-dried and dehydrated starters the answer is: Yes you can.  But just like with any starter that you bring home, the microbes may shift to match your local environment. It’s possible that your environment will be the same as the starters’ original home. But the more likely situation is that the yeast and bacteria that thrive in your flour, your kitchen, and your feeding routine will slowly become dominant over whatever was in the starter you brought in. That means the long-term version may not be exactly the same as what you started with. It may drift. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter - you will end up with a useable starter. But you’re not getting much of an advantage from buying one online vs. starting from scratch.  Even if you’re OK with that, here’s the difference: with a freeze-dried starter, you’re already baking real bread along the way. You’re not stuck feeding it for days without knowing if it’s even alive. You’re not waiting and guessing. You’re making loaves, learning the process, and enjoying the results.  From there, some folks might continue to buy freeze-dried culture so they can bake on-demand without having to worry about feeding schedules or “dying” starters. Other bakers may decide that they’d like to bake more regularly (at least once a week) and keep their wild starter fed and happy.  It’s nice to have options! Comparison at a Glance Bottom Line: If you want to start baking ASAP, get a freeze-dried starter People interested in sourdough baking don’t want to tend to a science experiment. They just want to bake real bread, and learn by doing. That’s why it makes sense to look for a head start. Compared to the uncertainty of borrowing a live starter or waiting days to see if a heat-dried one will work, freeze-dried cultures offer something better: a reliable culture that’s ready to go quickly. If you’re interested in the freeze-dried approach, consider Maison Fare’s products. We use a freeze-dried culture in our sourdough kits, pairing with thoughtfully selected flour blends to help home bakers get real results, fast.  Check out our selection, along with some handy accessories, here. 1. Ertop et al. “Quality Properties of Wheat Breads Incorporated with Dried Sourdoughs…” Food Science and Technology Research (2018).