Fermentation is a process which is generally taken place by enzymes or microorganisms. Cereal fermentations using sourdough as natural leavening agent retained more attention in the last years, largely because of the many advantages sourdough offers over baker’s yeast. Sourdough fermentation is one of the oldest examples of application of food biotechnology in food production. Sourdough is a mixture of flour and water that is fermented with lactic acid bacteria and yeasts and the microbial populations present in the fermented dough are used in the production of backery products. Based on usual principle used in artisanal or industrial processes, sourdoughs have been grouped into three types, based on fermentation time, temperature, propagation frequency and baker’s yeast addition. The microorganisms usually originate from flour, dough ingredients and environment. Sourdough is used for the production of sourdough bread, kashida; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; TEXT-KASHIDA: 0%; MARGIN: 6pt 0in 0pt; unicode-bidi: embed; DIRECTION: ltr" Key words : Sourdough, Lactic acid bacteria, Yeast, Lactobacillus plantarum
