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Who We Are "The sweat was from surprise and fear, not the Saudi heat. The guard staring through me from two feet away was holding his light-weight machine gun like he would use it, and I was telling myself that was surely impossible. I had triggered the airport security alarm during a plane transfer in Jeddah on an international flight back to Saudi Arabia. How would I explain the white dried sourdough material wrapped in aluminum foil hidden away in my inside pocket?" This excerpt from the first edition of World Sourdoughs From Antiquity describes an episode in the first steps of what would become Sourdoughs International, Inc. Dr. Edward Wood, as a pathologist working in Saudi Arabia, realized he was in the birthplace of bread, and a long-standing interest in sourdough baking led him to ethnic bakeries in the area in a quest for different authentic sourdough cultures that had been handed down through generations of bakers since the beginnings of man's first leavened bread. The laboratory in Riyadh was a good facility to study and purify the cultures as they were acquired Working at the Riyadh hospital was one of Dr. Wood's former medical school classmates, whose interest in sourdoughs led him to take to Arabia a culture reputed to have come from a Yukon gold rush prospector. Did this differ from the sourdoughs recently collected locally and around the Middle East and Europe? Their mutual curiosity led them to conduct a bake-off using the Yukon and several cultures that had been collected up to that time. Hospital personnel, without knowing the origin of the bread, evaluated the differences in flavor and texture, and there were differences. After Dr. Wood returned to the United States and had a refrigerator full of ethnic sourdough cultures, he wondered whether anyone else would be as fascinated as he with this unique collection, and the breads with different flavors and textures they could produce. After several trials, a good quality dried product was produced. The name—Sourdoughs International—seemed logical when the company was born because of the international origin of the cultures. It is now even more appropriate, as about 20 percent of our orders go to fifty four different countries. Over the intervening years the number of different international cultures has about doubled and more are being added as testing proves their worth. To ensure that the cultures could be used by everyone, it was necessary to write his first book to guide both expert and novice through the fermentation process of sourdough baking In addition to his medical degree, Dr Wood's background includes a PhD from Cornell University with studies in nutrition. His research is always underway to test new cultures, new ingredients and new ideas, and he has written three additional books as new information or methods have been acquired. The second edition of World Sourdoughs from Antiquity includes a chapter on his trip to Egypt with the National Geographic Society to learn how the pyramid builders in Giza made some of man's first leavened—sourdough—bread. (Vol 187, No.1, January 1995) Classic Sourdoughs is his most recent book, and the methods for sourdough baking have been fine-tuned to insure success for the home baker. Sourdoughs International will continue to be a source for bread baking and nutritional knowledge as well as unique sourdough cultures. |
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