This Is Exactly How To Spot Fake Sourdough Bread

For some people, sourdough is a straight-up way of life. Common white bread for a tuna sandwich recipe? "Nope, I'd rather go hungry!" If you relate to that, though, here's the news that might shock (and maybe even make you cynical): some sourdoughs out there are fake.

If you've ever made fresh-baked sourdough yourself, then you'll know the basics behind this wonderfully tangy bread are incredibly simple. All you need is flour, water, salt, and a sourdough starter — et voila, sourdough dough. But looking at the label for many loaves of sourdough sold at bakeries (especially supermarket bakeries), you might find the ingredient list to be far longer, containing everything from vinegar and acetic acid to sugar and malt. All of these indicate "fake" sourdough, or as some like to call them, "sour faux."

The bottom line is that real sourdough shouldn't contain any kind of additive. Even if it's something seemingly beneficial, like fortified vitamins and minerals, if you want your sourdough to be good and genuine, put it down. It's likely just a regular loaf of bread that's engineered to taste sour!

If you take a very close look at the label, you'll find many loaves with a strange and rather disconcerting fine print: "May contain bioengineered food ingredients." It means exactly what you think it is: somewhere in there is an ingredient that's been bioengineered. In other words, it's GMO.

Typically, they don't tell you exactly what ingredient it is. However, in store-bought sourdough, there's a long list of suspects. The flour could've been milled from GMO wheat, for instance, or a bit of GMO soybean oil was mixed into the dough. The reasons are plentiful, but all you need to know is this: authentic, high-quality sourdough bread shouldn't contain this line. You'll want loaves baked from heritage wheat and fermented with wild yeast only.

This is why it's so important to find a local artisanal bakery that uses quality ingredients if you don't make your own sourdough. And, if worst comes to worst and you've got to resort to supermarket bakery sourdough, find reputable sourdough brands to buy from. These are the surest way to get what you pay for!