You can lose some gluten and still have enough to maintain the structure of your dough. I think the person I mentioned thinks that’s what’s going on. (But it sure seems plausible to me that the actually relevant difference between sourdough bread and other bread is something else. If gluten degradation were the mechanism then you’d think you could do equally well by using weaker flour, not kneading as much, etc.)
I’ve made breads that are actually leavened with ordinary baker’s yeast but also contain some sourdough starter (in fact I have two loaves made that way sitting cooling on a rack right now), but it would never occur to me to call them sourdough breads. They’re ordinary yeasted breads with a bit of sourdough starter in to give flavour and longevity. But I guess if you’re selling bread, and your customers like the idea of sourdough bread, and you aren’t too scrupulous… :-)
If you google “what can legally be called a sourdough bread”, then I think you might see that this can be a problem.
But anyway, I think we can safely say that sourdough is probably a good way to test whether the issues are really gluten sensitivity, (because it certainly has some), or with other components of wheat.
You can lose some gluten and still have enough to maintain the structure of your dough. I think the person I mentioned thinks that’s what’s going on. (But it sure seems plausible to me that the actually relevant difference between sourdough bread and other bread is something else. If gluten degradation were the mechanism then you’d think you could do equally well by using weaker flour, not kneading as much, etc.)
I’ve made breads that are actually leavened with ordinary baker’s yeast but also contain some sourdough starter (in fact I have two loaves made that way sitting cooling on a rack right now), but it would never occur to me to call them sourdough breads. They’re ordinary yeasted breads with a bit of sourdough starter in to give flavour and longevity. But I guess if you’re selling bread, and your customers like the idea of sourdough bread, and you aren’t too scrupulous… :-)
If you google “what can legally be called a sourdough bread”, then I think you might see that this can be a problem.
But anyway, I think we can safely say that sourdough is probably a good way to test whether the issues are really gluten sensitivity, (because it certainly has some), or with other components of wheat.
Also, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process. This is surely producing a bread with a rather different chemistry to more traditional processes.