Natural leaven
Our mother dough is the unique imprint that makes our products authentic. In the past mother dough was something to guard so jealously for its unique features, that it was given to daughters when they were about to get married. In villages it was preserved by bakers who, with proper refreshing, kept it alive and redistributed it weekly to families preparing bread at home.
The main difference between brewer’s yeast and natural leaven is that brewer’s yeast is a concentrated selection of one bacterial strain, the saccharomyceses cerevisiae.The natural leaven is made up of several bacterial strains instead: different species of saccharomyces, species of lactic bacteria, species of acidic bacteria and various other microorganisms, according to where and how the mother dough is produced: as mother can be only one, so one mother dough can’t be absolutely identical to another one.
Like brewer’s yeast, mother dough brings about alcoholic fermentation but also lactic fermentation, similar to what happens in yogurt, where lactic bacteria turn flour sugars partly into lactic acid and partly into acetic acid. The result is the creation of a sour environment inside the dough (from here the name of sour leaven/dough) such that it is able to prevent possible pathogenic organisms and to naturally lengthen the leavens’ preservation time.
A natural leavening makes products healthier and more digestible. Our mother dough has been kept alive for more than forty years and preserved with care and attention, the way one would care for living thing, as sour dough is. The immediately noticeable differences between products leavened naturally and products raised with brewer’s yeast is in the unique consistency and taste that only a natural leaven yeast can give.