News

Lesaffre extends sourdough range

7 Jan 2016

Lesaffre has extended its offering for the sourdough market with a new brand and more comprehensive range, structured around four product families: starters, live sourdough, devitalized sourdough and sourdough-based preparations.

Lesaffre has extended its offering for the fast-expanding sourdough market with a new brand and more comprehensive range, structured around four product families: starters, live sourdough, devitalized sourdough and sourdough-based preparations. With more than 20 product references in total, Lesaffre says it thus offers a wide choice of solutions with varied aromatic profiles to stimulate the baker’s imagination and creativity.

With Livendo, Lesaffre claims it offers bakers genuine sourdough expertise and a new way of communicating about flavour.

“The company decided to opt for an imaginative, innovative, appealing brand,” said Eric Schubert, in charge of the Ingredients Department at Lesaffre International. “The name Livendo is both vital and meaningful: it conjures up live products, sourdough and dough. The choice of dark red and a spiral to symbolise the mixing process makes the brand readily identifiable. The packaging has also been totally reworked to make the range more legible and appealing.”

“The demand for sourdough-based products is steadily rising’, he continued. “The reason is simple, consumers want authentic products that combine the notions of taste and well-being. So, it’s no coincidence that the baseline ‘More than taste, more reasons to love it’ was chosen to underline all the benefits of sourdough, but mainly naturalness, freshness and health.”

Sourdough is a natural fermentation agent, which actively helps to enrich the sensory profile of bread, by developing its unique flavours and textures. However, aside from the aromatic aspect, it also delivers plenty of benefits, Lesaffre notes. The crumb is more elastic, more open; water retention is improved, thus delaying the staling process. The lower pH helps to preserve bread for longer thanks to its antifungal effect. Nutritionally speaking, the addition of sourdough is highly positive, the company goes on: the glycaemic index of bread is reduced, which thus helps reduce the risk of diabetes, the bioavailability of mineral salts is improved, and the formation of acrylamide is greatly reduced during baking.

The Livendo range offers more than 20 sourdough product references, structured around four product families:

Starters are formed from a combination of pure and carefully selected strains of lactic bacteria and yeast and are used to produce highly developed acids and aromas in dough. They help dispense with the need to refresh a spontaneous sourdough developed using traditional methods.

Devitalized sourdough, which is produced from fermented flour (wheat, rye, spelt, etc, requires no preparation and can be incorporated directly into the mixing process. It lends the finished product a distinct aromatic typicity peculiar to fermented cereal. It is used in all kinds of bread-making processes.

Ready-to-use in liquid form, live sourdoughs enable bakers to dispense with the sourdough preparation phase. It allows dough to rise and lends the finished product a distinct aromatic typicity peculiar to sourdough-based bakery goods. It is produced from the natural fermentation of cereal flour obtained from organic farming.

Lesaffre has also developed sourdough-based formulations enriched with malt, organic acids, spices, and so on. These preparations are used to extend and vary the range of aromatic profiles in bakery goods. They are directly incorporated into the mixing to give the finished product a unique flavour and colour.