The verdict on my sour dough is that it's delicious and I am now an enthusiast (not my bread pictured).
The Age had a great article on sour dough today, quoting some wonderful local producers and bemoaning the pretenders who don't make real sour dough. Apparently if you add a tiny amount of citric acid to your dough it helps improve the loaf rise without any flavour change - could be tempting, but that would be cheating. The Age goes on to say -
"As well as commercial yeast, chemical dough improvers, vinegars and sour powders are part of the grab-bag of tricks used in some of the mass-produced stuff. There is broad support among craft bakers for a national standard such as that in France, where the appellation ''pain au levain'' excludes additives and allows a maximum of 0.02 per cent yeast".
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/faux-or-dough-20110806-1ig3j.html#ixzz1UXFiIuuC
I'm sure that Helgas sour dough soft stuff isn't the real thing. I'm all for products having to be labelled correctly, damn GM produce seems to be turning up in more and more of our food.
I love real sourdough bread. I agree with you that incorrect labelling can be really frustrating. I hate the 'bred free range' labelling, because apparently all that means is that the pig gives birth outside. Can be kept in terrible cramped conditions apart from that, and still keep the label - so wrong!!
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