Bread of Heaven

Isn't it strange how often you get home with a nice looking loaf of bread, typically with some such title as artisan rustic whole wheat Tuscan pane, only to find that it is sourdough?  We seem to be experiencing something of an epidemic of sourdough bread trying to masquerade as, well, bread!  Given that the taste of sourdough bread is so very different from what the customer would expect (for Tuscan pane, for example) it seems to me that its sourdough origins should be marked in large letters "WARNING: SOURDOUGH".  Instead, it you have sufficiently good eyesight to actually read the ingredients, you will find, buried in the middle of the list "sourdough starter".

The importance of sourdough as part of the westward expansion of the white folks towards California, is well known.   But I've never experienced sourdough outside the United States, and especially not in Tuscany.  So I decided I needed to know more about sourdough and its history and geography.  The wikipedia article was not as informative as I would have liked, particularly about modern usage in places like Italy and France, but it did give some interesting history.  Apparently, until the middle ages, sourdough was the normal leavening agent for bread, having been developed in Egypt around 2,500 years ago.  I doubt that date slightly – I would expect bread to have been, like beer, an important aspect of civilization itself which began around 10,000 years ago.  It's also apparently the normal way of making rye bread because of rye's low gluten content.

So, I would be very interested to hear of people's experience in Europe with sourdough – I will be happy to hear if I'm wrong.

So which is the true Bread of Heaven?  What did the Welsh Methodist writer William Williams have in mind when he wrote that great rousing hymn which (later) borrowed the tune of the Welsh hymn Cwm Rhondda (the Rhondda valley). Both versions seem to be based on the story of the Exodus as an allegory for the travails of a Christian.  See the wikipedia article for more information.

Altogether now,

Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but thou art mighty;
Hold me with thy powerful hand:
Bread of heaven,
Feed me now and evermore.
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