Broa – a Portuguese traditional sourdough bread, made of maize and rye flours

This chapter deals with an ancient bread, produced by local small-farmers and households in Portugal. The bread is called Broa, and is made of regional maize and rye flours using traditional protocols of sourdough fermentation. The readers will hereby find several facts and curiosities about sourdough breadmaking, using an approach accessible to the general public and professional bakers – as well as to those “domestic scientists”, who transformed the homemade sourdough bread into a hobby or simply a healthy way-of-life. Among those questions are, for example, what is the difference between baker’s yeast and sourdough fermentation, which microscopic living beings are those responsible for mother-dough and sourdough fermentation, what are the technological and health benefits of baking with whole meal and sourdough bread, and how to better control the sourdough fermentation and baking processes. It also gives clues to develop household experiments aimed at improving the unique taste and aroma found in sourdough breads. Broa is hereby described under several items, viz. historical background, saber-fazer (know-how), sayings, litanies and practices of popular culture – rooted over centuries, and transmitted from generation to generation, as well as description of ancestral manufacture and, of course, broa recipes to be shared and tasted worldwide.