10/02/2026
"Is your sourdough really fermented?”
“Do you use a real starter?”
Another set of odd questions we get in the shop and at the markets. Why would someone ask that? Of course we use a real starter. Of course our dough ferments. Sourdough is sourdough… right?
Nope… here’s why they ask.
Some bread sold as sourdough uses starter mainly for flavor, while commercial yeast makes it rise. Others get their sour taste from added ingredients such as vinegar. You may hear those shortcuts called “sourfaux.”
I even found a product sold by King Arthur called Instant Sourdough Flavor. It’s a powder you can add to give bread that sourdough tang without maintaining a living starter. They clearly label it as a flavoring—but it shows how bread can taste like sourdough without being made through the traditional sourdough process.
Adding sourdough flavor doesn’t replace sourdough fermentation. That’s why asking how your bread is made matters.
Here at Farm to Cake, our sourdough bread is a three-day process, raised with a living starter we feed and maintain right here in the bakery. We don’t add commercial yeast to hurry it along, vinegar, or sourdough flavoring.
We keep part of our starter—the “mother”—and feed it to prepare the levain for the next bake. We always make enough for our bread and keep enough to feed again for the following day. That bucket in the photos? Five gallons of levain just for our Saturday Bake!
Flour, water, salt—and time. We mix, fold, shape, and give the dough time to ferment and develop its flavor.
Come by in the late afternoon and you may see tomorrow’s loaves tucked into their proofing baskets, settled in for the night. We bake so much sourdough that we sometimes run out of room in the back!
Now those questions make perfect sense to me. And we’re happy to show you how your bread is made.
