Adding egg white improves gluten-free sourdough

Sourdough has been identified as ideal for the gluten-free food market due to its contribution to bread structure and flavour. Studies by researchers in Turkey and Finland into the use of egg white foam to build up structure in low-gluten bread making applications have recently been published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

The study investigated how egg white could build foam structures with sourdoughs, as well as looking at how the egg proteins may affect fermentation parameters. The latter point is important as egg white proteins are known to exhibit antimicrobial activity, which is undesirable in sourdough formulations.

Results showed no effect on the fermentation parameters, indicating that the peptidase-inhibitory and antimicrobial properties of egg white play no important role in sourdoughs.

They concluded that their study findings showed that a convenient way to form foams containing both egg white and sourdough was to first whip egg whites into foam and then mix in the fermented sourdough.

Reference: Erem et al. 2010. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. doi: 10.1021/jf903228x