Sourdough Wheat Bread

• Before commercial yeast production, most breads were leavened, or made to rise, with sourdough starters. A cook can make bread for many years by using only a portion of the live starter and periodically adding flour and water to replenish it and keep it alive. Ingredients for traditional sourdough wheat bread are starter, flour (white, whole wheat or a combination of the two), water and salt.

Classic Wheat Bread

• Wheat breads made with yeast have ingredients similar to those in sourdough: flour, yeast, water and salt. There are many variations to the basic recipe that can include milk, eggs, sugar or honey, butter or olive oil, fruit, herbs or nuts.

Commercial Wheat Breads

• When wheat bread is commercially made for storage on grocery shelves, additional ingredients are added to keep the bread from spoiling or getting stale. These ingredients include, among many others, high fructose corn syrup, mono and diglycerides, calcium sulfate, extracts of malted barley and corn and calcium propionate.