Simply Nature Organic Sourdough Multigrain Bread

Sourdough is a most interesting bread. It’s traditionally fermented, which gives it the trademark sour taste. Since it’s not your typical loaf, sourdough tends to carry with it a more exotic reputation. Suffice to say that if you’re in a deli and order a sandwich, you’re going to take more notice if your ham and Swiss is on sourdough rather than plain white.

Most grocers sell sourdough bread … although there is debate as to what constitutes “real” sourdough, a discussion that erupted in the comments of our review of some Aldi Regular Buy sourdough. There is no legal definition for sourdough, which has given rise to a lot of different breads that claim to be sourdough. Purists will tell you that “real” sourdough rises through fermentation, not yeast, and that anything with yeast is “fake” sourdough. The rub is that most grocery store sourdough is the yeast kind, and depending on who you are, that might be an issue.

Still, grocers carry items labeled as sourdough, and we spotted just such a loaf as a limited-time item in our local Aldi. Does that mean it’s the “real” stuff or the “fake” stuff?

Read on.

Simply Nature Organic Sourdough Multigrain Bread (Product Code: 711849) is an Aldi Find. It’s only in stores for a short time, and once it’s sold out, you won’t be able to find it in stores again until it comes back, assuming it does come back. If it’s not currently at your local store, you can’t order it online.

At the time of this post, the loaf comes in a 24-ounce bag and costs $4.99, or around 21 cents an ounce.

Let’s talk about the label. Now, the bag boasts that it contains three main ingredients: flour, water, and salt. The ingredients list tells a little more, noting that the ingredients are water, organic whole wheat flour, organic wheat flour, organic sourdough culture (organic wheat flour, water), organic honey, organic rolled oats, organic poppy seeds, organic flax seeds, organic pumpkin seeds, and sea salt. One allergen is listed, wheat.

Simply Nature is Aldi’s house brand that claims to be less processed, and it certainly seems that way here, with a relative minimum of ingredients, all of them recognizable. There are no strange additives … and there is no yeast. This seems to check off the boxes for “real” sourdough, at least as best as we can tell. It also boasts, in more than one place, that it is certified organic.

Nutritionally, each two-slice serving has 130 calories, 1 gram of fat, 250 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbs, and 1 gram of dietary fiber. Most of those numbers seem modest to us. Our one disappointment is the fiber content. We’ve come to understand that it’s good to have a good carb-to-fiber ratio: in other words, when you divide carbs by fiber, you should have a low number, preferably under 10. Aldi sells some different Regular Buy breads that do just that, specifically its Graintastic and Seedtastic breads. This sourdough bread, meanwhile, has a ratio of 23:1, which is high and signals that it doesn’t have much fiber.

That points back to the ingredients list, which contains both organic whole wheat flour and organic wheat (enriched) flour. Enriched flour strips out the fiber, and the mix here is high enough that fiber content ends up being on the low side.

In fairness, though, I had a hard time finding sourdough online, “real” or “fake,” that was much different in terms of fiber. Most sourdough is low in fiber. It’s not universally true — I found a couple of isolated exceptions — but it’s true in most cases. Even in higher-fiber cases, I couldn’t find anything close to, say, Graintastic bread. That appears to be the tradeoff of sourdough.

To the question of taste, our testers liked it. It’s a simple bread with enough sour to mark it as sourdough without it being overwhelming. We tried it with lunch meat and with chicken salad and it was a hit both ways. The texture is smooth (something we’d expect given the lower fiber content) with some small bits of texture from oats and seeds, and the taste complements nicely the things we pair with it.

The Verdict:

Simply Nature Organic Sourdough Multigrain Bread was well-received with our testers. It has a good texture and taste and worked well with things we ate it with. It also appears — as best as we can tell — to be a “real” sourdough, as it doesn’t use yeast and is made of all simple ingredients. While we wish it had a little more fiber, that seems to be par for the course in most sourdough, and the tradeoff is a smoother texture. While it’s currently only a limited-time Aldi Find, we’re not opposed to getting this bread again.