Bread made with sourdough has a molecular signature

Bread made with sourdough has a distinctive ' molecular signature ', different from that of baked goods made with other processes. This peculiar signature has now been identified and deciphered thanks to an Italian study led by Sapienza University of Rome, in collaboration with the 'Aldo Moro' University of Bari, and published in the journal Food Chemistry.

The result, achieved within the Metrofood-IT research infrastructure coordinated by ENEA and dedicated to ensuring the safety and quality of agri-food supply chains, paves the way for " food passports " that protect food and wine excellence and assure consumers of their authenticity. The researchers, led by Cesare Manetti and Carlo Giuseppe Rizzello of Sapienza University, used a technique from spectroscopy , which studies how matter interacts with electromagnetic waves passing through it: the method does not destroy the analyzed sample and is easy to apply using portable instruments. This made it possible to read the trace left by an infrared beam when it passes through a slice of bread : the way the molecules vibrate , in fact, depends on the microscopic structure of the slice , which is in turn determined by the process used to produce the bread. Thanks to this technique, therefore, it is possible to unequivocally identify a specific product and ascertain its authenticity , thus ensuring a consistently high quality standard. According to the authors of the study, sharing these molecular signatures will become increasingly important for databases aimed at authenticating products.