Fermentation That’s Just Wild Enough

Appears in
How to Bake Sourdough Bread: Fermentation, Starters & Recipes

By Michael Kalanty

Published 2025

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When they have access to water, Wild Yeast microbes come back to life. They reanimate. They begin eating any available food source, like the simple sugar molecules contained in the flour. As time goes by, the hard-to-digest starches in the flour are broken into sugar molecules that the yeast can eat, too.

This is the process of Wild Fermentation. It needs no control or human intervention. It can happen spontaneously when yeast-covered foods get wet. Wheat, Corn, and Grapes are examples of foods that can start fermenting without any help from us.