A stomach, a book, a starter and a start

A little story on how I got here.

I have always loved bread and dough products, but due to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), I've largely avoided it for many years. The fructans in flour, which contains oligosaccharides, are a cause for my stomach getting bloated. They are higher in rye and wheat than spelt, so I have been using spelt to make yeast breads or buns now and then.

Graphic comparing levels of FODMAPs in different flours.

Half a year ago I got a book on FODMAPs as a birthday present. It contained information on IBS, FODMAPS, what to eat, what to avoid and recipes. After using the book extensively for half a year, the author released a second book. In it was a recipe for sourdough spelt bread with a spelt starter, which was classified as low FODMAP. I'd heard about sourdough before, but never looked into it or tried myself.

Spelt is not free of FODMAPs and spelt in itself is high in oligosaccharides. The trick lies in the sourdough. When fermented using sourdough, the FODMAPs in bread is reduced compared to yeast.

Here is a graphic comparing spelt bread with yeast and with sourdough.

If you don't eat too much, spelt sourdough bread will most likely be fine for most with IBS in their diet. I recently came across an article that says wheat bread is also low FODMAP when made using sourdough.

This prompted me to start my own sourdough starter. After some trial and tribulations I had a healthy starter. I first made it at 50% hydration because the recipe used volume instead of mass and 1/4 cup of water is around double the weight of 1/4 cup of flour. The starter has since been split into two and one of them converted to a whole wheat starter. Since the research in the mentioned article says wheat is also low FODMAP when made using sourdough, I will try to use wheat in my diet and see how my stomach responds.

I'm an avid user of the Internet, Google and forums, so I naturally ended up finding a forum which could answer all my questions regarding sourdough bread. So here I am. My girlfriend is sometimes a bit worried that I spend too much time looking at bread.

I have made about 10+ breads so far and am quite pleased with the results. I've probably made 50/50 spelt loaves and wheat loaves (some mixed) since I live with four others and want to improve my skills by making bread almost every day. I plan to use this blog as a diary of sorts, where I post what I bake, the recipe and results. It is useful for myself having a history, and I hope someone else might also stumble upon it and find inspiration.