Soy Sauce and the “Sour dough”

So it’s time to front up with the results of my first sour dough experiment. 🙂 Well…. I did make a loaf with it, but I have to be honest and say it was definitely not the “happy ever after” ending I was hoping for. It was edible, and pretty tasty but nothing to brag about. So back to the drawing board for me with that one…. and I will let you know when I come up with something good.
In the mean time, I have been doing a little reading on naturally brewed soy sauce versus it chemically produce, super cheap counter part. This may be common knowledge to you all but I thought it was pretty interesting from the point of view of,  how often do we just eat stuff, without knowing how it is made or what is in it?

Naturally brewed soy sauce is a very old and traditionally made condiment. It is made by mixing cooked soybeans with roasted wheat and a species of mold called Aspergillus Oryzae. This mold is allowed to grow for a few days, then it is mixed with a salt water brine and allowed to ferment. The fermentation can take from 6 months up to several years depending on the quality of the soy sauce. The soy bean mix is then pressed and the resulting liquid, soy sauce, is then packaged and sold.
Non brewed soy sauce is a completely different story,and has been hugely speed up thanks (well, not sure about the thanks to be honest) to a process called acid hydrolysis. So what happens is this: They take soybean meal, probably leftover from the production of soybean oil and boil it with hydrochloric acid for hours to hydrolize or break down the proteins into amino acids. This mixture is then neutralized with sodium carbonate, it is then colored and flavoured with corn syrup, caramel color, salt and water. This whole process takes just a couple of days and it can be packaged and sold.
Now my question is this….. why, if you have a choice would we eat something, which is really just left overs that have gone through a bunch of…. sure, edible but chemical processes nonetheless, when we could choose something traditionally and naturally made with actual nutrient value and amazing natural flavour dimensions? It is really just about knowing where our food comes from, and training out taste buds to be discerning to the real deal. Food snobbery on this level is a good thing. Train your taste buds to be snobs to the fake mass produced rubbish that is being disguised as food these days.
Unfortunately for us here in New Zealand, there are not heaps of options out there for us as far as naturally brewed soy sauce is concerned. There are a couple of options in the supermarkets, Kikkoman being the most well known one. Just look for “naturally brewed’ on the label.