Sourdough

Sourdough is a cooperative business project (type ICON) in which three businesses from the bakery sector collaborate with a research institute to reach a common objective. 
The objective of the project consortium is to create an operationally excellent bakery production process in an industrial context based on industrial (starter cultures) and artisan sourdoughs (spontaneous fermentations) with the desired qualities and nutritional profiles. This project provides a proof-of-principle of an improved industrial sourdough fermentation process and/or a related improved bread preparation process that results in improved final quality (sensory) and a good nutritional profile. 
The general objectives are: 

• Constructing a research method for food product fermentation processes Gaining knowledge about the interactions between flour, water and micro-organisms with an impact on the quality of the produced sourdoughs (in particular in relation to the age of the flour and the mineral content of, mainly, calcium, iron, manganese and magnesium, of the flour/water mixture) 
• Gaining knowledge about the effect of parameters of primary transformation processes with an impact on the sourdough quality 
• Gaining knowledge about the effect of the secondary transformation processes (storage of sourdough, impact of the dough preparation and baking process) during the preparation processes of bakery products based on sourdough (sourdough bread) or by adding sourdough (bread with sourdough), in particular in relation to time. 

Project Partners

This ICON project gathers a multidisciplinary project consortium with complementary expertise from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, under the supervision of Prof. Luc De Vuyst and the companies Puratos, Lantmännen Unibake and Bio Bakkerij De Trog.