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Cereals and bread from Research ferment

Quinoa (and pseudocereal) sourdough

Quinoa flour and water are mixed one to one and left warm, and a little of each day's ripe dough is used to start the next. Lactic acid bacteria from the flour take over and sour it within a few days, and the stable sourdough is then added to wheat bread dough.

Fully documentedCereals and bread8 days – 10 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceProportions of the laboratory sourdough of Franco et al. 2020. No household recipe with fixed amounts was found; the 20 % dose for wheat bread is from Rizzello et al. 2016.
Quinoa flour1 part by weightDesaponified and milled to wholegrain flour[franco2020]
Water1 part (50:50 w/v)[franco2020]
Back-slop from the previous day's dough1% of the ripe sourdough[franco2020]
Ripe quinoa sourdough, when baked into wheat bread20% of the bread dough (w/w)[rizzello2016]
Starterbackslop (spontaneous at first); selected strains in some studies

Total time across the recorded steps: 8 days – 10 days

Start
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What changes: Quinoa grains are desaponified and milled into wholegrain flour

Step 1 of 4
Remove the saponins and mill the grain to wholegrain flour
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

In the laboratory study the milled flours were kept in sterile containers at 4 °C until use. Output: wholegrain quinoa flour.

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

Quinoa flour and water are mixed one to one and left warm, and a little of each day's ripe dough is used to start the next. Lactic acid bacteria from the flour take over and sour it within a few days, and the stable sourdough is then added to wheat bread dough. Made in 4 steps over 8 days – 10 days. The longest step, ferment warm and back-slop every day, takes 8–10 days (Franco W 2020) and runs at 30 °C (Franco W 2020). Pediococcus pentosaceus and Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc (L. citreum), Weissella (W. cibaria), Lactococcus and Enterococcus in spontaneous quinoa sourdough do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step8–10 daysReported[franco2020][sterr2009]Ferment warm and back-slop every day
Temperature30 °CReported[franco2020][sterr2009]Ferment warm and back-slop every day
AciditypH 6.5 → 4Measured[franco2020]Ferment warm and back-slop every day

What makes this one different

Quinoa has no gluten. In the spontaneous doughs of Franco et al. 2020, lactobacilli, pediococci and enterococci were the most common isolates; among the bacteria, only the pediococci, leuconostocs and weissellas made exopolysaccharides (thickening sugars) from starch, and P. pentosaceus gave the highest yield.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Amaranth sourdoughAmaranth flour back-slopped daily at 30 °C for 10 days; L. plantarum, L. sakei and P. pentosaceus were selected as starter candidates.
  • Selected-starter quinoa sourdoughStarted with L. plantarum T6B10 and F. rossiae T0A16 isolated from quinoa instead of waiting for spontaneous strains.

Safety

Back-slopped quinoa doughs reached pH about 4 within a few days in the laboratory (Franco et al. 2020). The bread is baked before eating.

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [franco2020] Franco W., Pérez-Díaz I.M., Connelly L., Diaz J.T. 2020, Isolation of exopolysaccharide-producing yeast and lactic acid bacteria from quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) sourdough fermentation, Foods 9(3):337, doi:10.3390/foods9030337paper
  2. [rizzello2016] Rizzello C.G., Lorusso A., Montemurro M., Gobbetti M. 2016, Use of sourdough made with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) flour and autochthonous selected lactic acid bacteria for enhancing the nutritional, textural and sensory features of white bread, Food Microbiology 56:1–13, doi:10.1016/j.fm.2015.11.018 (abstract)paper
  3. [sterr2009] Sterr Y., Weiss A., Schmidt H. 2009, Evaluation of lactic acid bacteria for sourdough fermentation of amaranth, International Journal of Food Microbiology 136:75–82, doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2009.09.006 (abstract)paper