ORLANDO, FLA.—Speakers brought up former Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt and the book “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” in describing the benefits of fermentation and sprouted grains during a Feb. 18 session at the American Society of Baking’s BakingTech 2025 in Orlando.

Using fermentation to make bread, such as sourdough, requires one special element, said Karl De Smedt, head of the Sourdough Institute for Puratos.

“There is no magical solution,” he said. “Fermentation requires time. If there is one thing we should do in baking, we should reinvest time.”

Instead, industry has accelerated the process, sprinting to finish product quickly, which De Smet compared to Bolt, who won gold medals in the Summer Olympics in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

“What we did over the last 30, 40 years is try to make the life of the baker easier,” he said.

Perhaps fermentation could be compared to long-distance champion Kipchoge Keino, who won a gold medal in both the 1968 Summer Olympics and the 1972 Summer Olympics. Fermentation, although it requires time, adds unique flavors and aromas to bread as well as gut health. The BakingTech session focused mostly on gut health.

“The gut should be diverse,” De Smedt said. “We have these trillions of microorganisms living in there, and they should be very diverse. The (more diverse) they are, the better job they will do.”

The microorganisms assist in turning complex fibers into nutrients, he said. When digestion is not optimal, consumers do not absorb nutrients because phytic acid gets in the way.

“This phytic acid is actually causing the barrier between our body and the minerals and the vitamins that are present in the dough,” De Smedt said.

The sourdough process lowers the pH and releases an enzyme called phytase that breaks down phytic acid. With phytic acid out of the way, the body has access to absorb the vitamins and the minerals.

Sprouting grains assists in getting phytic acid out of the way, too.

In “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” the secret password “open sesame” was needed to access a cave full of treasures, said Brian Chang, in R&D bakery for Puratos USA. Likewise, the sprouting process opens the pathway for nutrients to become more bio-accessible inside the body. Studies have shown that sprouting grains increases the bio-accessibility of magnesium, iron and phosphorous, he said.

In the sprouting process, grains are soaked in water and allowed to germinate. Tiny sprouts form that contain nutrients. Enzymes break down phytic acid, which leads to more bio-accessible nutrients. Typically, the sprouting process takes two days, but Puratos uses a four-day process and then fermentation to increase bio-accessibility even further, Chang said.

De Smedt pointed to Japan, one of the world’s healthiest countries, as an example of fermentation’s benefits.

“From the figures I have, in Japan 70% of the food being consumed is fermented,” he said.

In the United States, about 10% of the food consumed is fermented.