Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cereals and bread from Germany

Buckwheat sourdough with acetic acid bacteria (molasses-sweetened)

Buckwheat flour, water and molasses are fermented with selected acetic acid bacteria that need air. The bacteria turn the sucrose in the molasses into levan, a long fructose chain that thickens the dough, while acids build up; the sourdough is then baked into gluten-free bread with more volume and a softer crumb.

Fully documentedCereals and bread24 h – 2 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe abstracts read do not give amounts; the studies varied molasses level, inoculum size and dough yield.
Buckwheat flour[uaarak2017]
MolassesSupplies the sucrose the bacteria turn into levan; the starting amount changed how much levan formed[uaarak2016][uaarak2017]
WaterThe dough yield also changed bacterial growth and levan yield[uaarak2016]
Gluconobacter albidus TMW 2.1191 or Kozakia baliensis NBRC 16680 culture[uaarak2017]
Starterdefined culture of acetic acid bacteria

Total time across the recorded steps: 24 h – 2 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: The bacterial culture is stirred into buckwheat flour, water and molasses

Step 1 of 4
Mix buckwheat flour, molasses, water and the acetic acid bacteria
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: inoculated buckwheat dough.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Buckwheat flour, water and molasses are fermented with selected acetic acid bacteria that need air. The bacteria turn the sucrose in the molasses into levan, a long fructose chain that thickens the dough, while acids build up; the sourdough is then baked into gluten-free bread with more volume and a softer crumb. Made in 4 steps over 24 h – 2 days. The longest step, ferment with air, takes 24 h – 2 days (Ua-Arak T 2017). Gluconobacter albidus TMW 2.1191 and Kozakia baliensis NBRC 16680 do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step24 h – 2 daysMeasured[uaarak2017][uaarak2016]Ferment with air

What makes this one different

Most sourdoughs rely on lactic acid bacteria and yeasts working without much air. This one uses acetic acid bacteria that need oxygen and that are chosen for the levan they make from sucrose, so the sourdough works as a natural thickener for bread with no gluten.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Isolated-levan buckwheat breadLevan isolated from the bacteria and added to dough directly, to check its effect without the sourdough's acids.

Safety

A research ferment made with defined strains (G. albidus TMW 2.1191 is described as food-grade in a 2017 paper).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Ua-Arak, Jakob and Vogel of the Technical University of Munich set up aerobic buckwheat-molasses doughs with three levan-producing acetic acid bacteria in a 2016 paper. In 2017 they tested sourdough breads from two of the strains, and showed that fermentation pH changes the size of the levan of G. albidus TMW 2.1191, which was isolated from water kefir. The 2017 bread paper presents levan-producing acetic acid bacteria as a promising route to clean-label gluten-free bread without additives.

  1. [uaarak2017] Ua-Arak T., Jakob F., Vogel R.F. 2017, Influence of levan-producing acetic acid bacteria on buckwheat-sourdough breads, Food Microbiology 65:95–104, doi:10.1016/j.fm.2017.02.002 (abstract)paper
  2. [uaarak2017ph] Ua-Arak T., Jakob F., Vogel R.F. 2017, Fermentation pH modulates the size distributions and functional properties of Gluconobacter albidus TMW 2.1191 levan, Frontiers in Microbiology 8:807, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2017.00807 (abstract)paper
  3. [uaarak2016] Ua-Arak T., Jakob F., Vogel R.F. 2016, Characterization of growth and exopolysaccharide production of selected acetic acid bacteria in buckwheat sourdoughs, International Journal of Food Microbiology 239:103–112, doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2016.04.009 (abstract)paper