Hello and welcome to Sourdough and stories beyond

I am your host Mykola Nevrev. In each episode of this podcast, I am going to share a story from the wonderful, and sometimes strange world of sourdough baking and beyond.”

Today’s story is about baking in space.

If you ask me about the craziest dream that I have, I would say that I dream of baking sourdough bread on another planet, and I hope that I will be able to do this in my lifetime. If not, I am sure that my starter Luigi will live much longer than me, and if not me then he will be involved in space baking.

To get ready for my space baking odyssey, I have been following everything that was already done and published on this topic.

Fun fact: during my research for this episode, I asked ChatGPT about sourdough in space and received 2 very specific answers. The first one claimed that the sourdough starter was sent to space on a SpaceX mission and the starter originated from the world-famous Tartine bakery in San Francisco. 

The answer seemed to be too good to be true, so I asked again and received another specific answer, where the AI suggested that a 120-year-old Alaskan starter had been to space.

 It took me a few hours to double-check all of this and discover that NASA hasn’t actually done any experiments with sourdough starter in orbit so far, so just in case someone from NASA is listening to this podcast, please contact me, and I will gladly share a sample of my starter for space experiments.

If the real experiments on space sourdough haven’t taken place yet, let’s try to imagine what the results of such an experiment could be. The International Space Station is currently the only place in space inhabited by the human race, so if the sourdough starter ends up there, the bugs inside of it will interact with the bacteria living in the station. 

Products and materials arriving to the space station are supposed to be sterile to avoid any problems, but researchers found that the station is not as deserted as they thought; in fact, it has quite an abundant bacterial life. As you can imagine, it is mostly the bacteria from the bodies of astronauts. 

Awkward comment: as these bodily bacteria reportedly thrive on air filters, I am not sure if I want to smell the air inside the station. An Earthly sourdough starter might be affected not only by the bacteria and yeast inside of flour, but also by those circulating in the air or living on baker’s hands.

How the personality of a baker and his lifestyle influences the taste of bread is a topic worthy of an entire episode, but for now I will just say that based on research, your hands can certainly influence the taste of your bread.

Now, if we exclude bacteria from nature and increase the number of bacteria living on the body, how will it influence the taste of the starter? We don’t really know so far and there’s also a chance that it will not have any significant effect at all, as astronauts wouldn’t actually touch the starter during the feeding: that’s because without gravitation, the flour would fly everywhere like dust and become dangerous for breathing in space station conditions. 

So I suspect that it would be a fully automatic feeding procedure without direct contact or air exposure. To be honest, I can’t wait until this experiment takes place to see the results and the way it is performed technically.

The fact that bread is made of flour and eating bread produces crumbs is enough to write a whole chapter of “bread in space” stories, as flying flour and crumbs could be inhaled by astronauts and damage engines. 

This became clear at the very beginning of the space era when during NASA’s 1965 Gemini mission, to the disapproval of the NASA organization, a corned beef sandwich was smuggled on board by one of the pilots. Since then, bread has been largely forbidden and astronauts have famously replaced it with tortillas, which produce no crumbs.

However, the idea of baking bread in space is still floating around, and some important steps towards the first space loaf have already been taken.

I love the fact, that the feeling of craving fresh bread is often mentioned by astronauts and I can understand this, because bread can provide a sense of comfort and grounding, if grounding is even possible in space.

A tiny bite of history: the first crumb-free buns appeared in space on the MIR space station in December of 1988, and the recipe was developed by a world-famous yeast producer from France, the Lesaffre company.

The first baking ever performed in space was not about bread, though—it was much easier. Space cookies were successfully baked 5 years ago in an oven provided by the Zero G Kitchen company from Texas. Pieces of pre-mixed dough were packed in silicone bags and then heated in the oven. 

Surprisingly, the baking took much longer—more than 2 hours. Because of the crumbs it produced, the cookies were not eaten by the astronauts (and I feel sorry for them) but instead, were returned to Earth and one of them was donated to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

This cookie experiment paved the way for another research project by the University of Florida. Doctoral student Hope Hersh suggested a type of “bread bag” for space baking. These bags are similar to the bags used for blood donation. Inside of each bag are dry ingredients: flour, dry yeast and salt. 

After water is injected, astronauts must massage the bag to distribute it and to develop the gluten. The bread can then be baked in the same container to avoid crumbs. Baking in bags actually makes a lot of sense in zero gravity conditions, as the bread loaf will not hold its shape otherwise.

Another well-known project in orbital baking is the German based start up called Bake in Space. Their oven prototype had a lot of interesting features: for example, the surface of the oven doesn’t heat beyond 45 degrees Celsius due to space station rules, 

and it also cannot be opened after being pre heated or right after baking as invisible bubbles of hot air don’t rise like they do on Earth but rather fly in random directions due to zero gravity— and this could potentially burn astronauts or destroy equipment. 

That’s why the bread must be placed inside a cold oven and taken out only once the oven is cooled. This can increase heat exposure and dry the bread out, so special recipes are required. 

Also, as we know from the cookie experiment, baking takes much longer in space, so the oven chamber must be injected with additional steam to avoid drying out the crust.

These experiments are still on going, and I hope to see the first space bread soon.

Reading all these articles about such high-tech solutions for bread baking made me realize that despite being a relatively easy task on Earth, bread baking is really a rocket science when it comes to space bread.

This episode was recorded in the beautiful downtown of Bratislava Slovakia.

You can find the text version on my website mykolanevrev.com 

Many thanks to Mandy Jones and Pilota Creative for producing this podcast.

I’m looking forward to sharing another story in two weeks. Until then, please don’t smuggle any corned beef sandwiches into the International Space Station.  

Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/first-chocolate-chip-cookies-in-space-photos-how-its-done-2019-11
https://www.mainstreetdailynews.com/education/uf-student-creates-space-bread_id_efe1be14-5513-11ec-8cfe-9b412344e611
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/26/539103284/3-2-1-bake-off-the-mission-to-make-bread-in-space
https://www.amazon.com/Never-Home-Alone-Millipedes-Honeybees/dp/1541645766
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeT1E-5eog8