Evolution of Sourdough: Now in Ice Cream, Pasta, Chocolate and Beer

The sourdough bread has reached its peak of evolution as it is now being used as an ingredient and flavouring into something beyond just bread. Catalonia's El Celler de Can Roca has devised many intriguing dishes and one of this is their sourdough ice cream with cacao pulp, fried lychee and Jerez vinegar meringue.

This dish is rumoured to be a favourite of Mark Zuckerberg as reported in Independent UK. Online reviewers call the dish as fun, inventive, and delicate. This idea is already spreading in United Kingdom where restaurants, bakeries and breweries are inventing ways to incorporate sourdough texture and taste to pasta, beers and chocolates.

One of the best restaurants this year, The Ledburry also offers sourdough ice cream. Head chef Brett Graham describes the ice cream as tasting like salted caramel toast, with a slight hint of yeast salt, and sweet in a silky and smooth texture. Another twist into this sourdough phenomenon is serving the said ice cream in a crispy sourdough toast piled with whipped butter and marmalade. "It's just a fun way of doing toast," says Graham. "Especially with foreigners, we're like, 'You've come to England, you've got to have some marmalade on toast'," he added.

Meanwhile, restaurat Flinty Red highlights sourdough's savoury possibilities by using it as the base for pasta. Head chef Matt Williamson has come up with this bright idea when he was trying to find a way to use the excess flour and water used to make the bread. Surprisingly, the pasta has a chewy texture and has a mild flavour compared to the conventional egg pasta. He also uses sourdough crumbs in passatelli, a dumpling-like pasta served in broth.

According to George Turner, head baker at Stock Exchange, sourdough has brought a different taste in conventional pastries, "The sourdough starter does definitely bring a unique robust element to the croissant. You get a deeper flavour... a slight sourness mingled with sweetness."

More so, Chris Brennan, founder of Pump Street Baker in Suffolk has incorporated sourdough bread into his chocolate saying the process is almost the same in making the two products. Brennan explained that the attraction for sourdough is paralleled to a rise of interest in fermentation process. "These fermented flavours are far more interesting, Williamson added, creating a complex sweetness and sourness that develops over time through an organic process, rather than through adding things such as vinegar or lemon juice."

Lastly this flavour is also celebrated in all time drinks of all time, beer. A high-wheat base mixture is left with the starter to ferment in oak barrels for six months. Andrew Cooper of The Wild Beer Co spoke to Tom Herbert of Hobbs House Bakery about this revolution in beer. "works better with people who have a pretty open mind about food and flavour...and appreciation for wine or cider... more than a traditional beer drinker," says Cooper."