www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Food - Recipes Sourdough

Presumably, before commercially produced yeast, prosfory (and other bread for Church use) were prepared using soudough starter.

Does anyone have experience of baking for Church with sourdough?

Well, I know that when I was back at Weekend School at my local Byzantine Church as a youngster, I remember the process of making prosphora. Can't really remember the recipe or the baking off hand, but I don't remember sourdough as being anything we'd use in the Ruthenian nor Ukrainian Catholic Churches. I'll have to look that up.

I'm mindful that we're probably looking 'Old Country' and old people here. Sourdough must have been used at one time, since 'wild yeasts' were the only ones available for baking before yeast was availble in cakes, tins or sachets.

A natural method of fermentation had to have been used, as commercial baking yeast was not available until relatively recently in terms of bread-baking history. According to the article below (see "History" section), commercial yeast became available in the late 19th century. When I lived in Bulgaria (1996-2005), the elderly village women would tell me of the time before commercial breads or yeast when they used to bake at home with sourdough starter. They called it "kvas."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker%27s_yeast

I used to bake prosphora for my church, but always made it with commercial yeast. However, I've experimented over the years with natural fermentation methods for bread-making at home, sometimes with amazing results. The book I found most helpful on learning to make sourdough bread was "The Village Baker" by Joe Ortiz (1993), especially the method "Pain de Campagne" on pp. 82-85. It produced incredible results, as good as anything I'd ever bought at an artisan bakery. "Bread Alone" by Daniel Leader (1993) is also a good one, very simple to follow, but I didn't get as good results taste-wise with that method as with Ortiz's. There are probably more recent books around, but those are the ones I've used. I see no reason why their methods couldn't be adapted to make prosphora.

Just to clarify, "kvas" can also refer to a drink, and I think to a few other fermented things, but these women were specifically talking about a sourdough starter for bread that was a lump of fermented flour and water that served as a natural leaven for bread-making.

The link Jaya posted above

Yeast [en.wikipedia.org]

I'll have to see when there'll be any more prosphora baking classes around to refresh my memory of how it was really made. I'm going to have to see who hold these locally. Not sure if these were listed at the Eparchy/Cathedral level.