Carl Griffith, bless 'im, MHRIP.
I dun my Carl's sourdough culture wrong, I did. Left it to languish for too long in the refridgerator. It's like a little pet, and it doesn't like that. Then I impatiently rushed it back into production too fast, without the necessary time required to bring the whole thing back to full bloom. Even so, although its rise can be improved, its taste cannot be beat. So I won't complain here, just marvel at the robust stability that is Carl's 1847 Sourdough starter.
I just now read online that sourdough cultures eventually take on aspects of their new environment because organisms are present in flour and in the air so eventually the culture becomes diluted. This is true. In fact those wheat-borne and airborne organisms are easily cultivated, but it leaves out an important fact: yeast cultures contain organisms in multitudes and they both coexist and compete with each other in a miniature war until finally achieving some kind of settled victory. Some organisms, for one, Lactobacillus sanfrancisco, are seriously vigilant little soldiers and do not tolerate contamination and aggressively attack. The strain does not play well with others. They're ethnocentristic little bastards and do not allow mixed unions. So a culture of San Francisco style sourdough will indeed retain it's unique characteristics over time. This is my experience.
Truth is, San Francisco sourdough is distinct from a culture collected at nearby Antioch immediately NE of San Francisco but not at seaside and not shrouded in daily fog. The combination of airborne organisms in the two places differ significantly.
Incidentally, the Antioch culture that my brother collected for me is my favorite of all time. It's a story in itself told here on these pages. The culture is noticeably more virile and bakes to a thinner crust than the SF culture I own, which is among my least favorite, and I've had SF sourdough culture five times. I still have some but never use it. Apparently, SF culture had a better marketing director.
The culture I collected on Maui is also more virile than SF. It was collected in just a few windy hours and fed it initially with flour purchased on Maui but originating from who-knows-where. The baked bread has a different, slightly tan color, even though it's been fed repeatedly with flour purchased in Denver ever since, but also with an unknown origin. It's been years now and it remains uniquely Maui with distinctly different flavor and with noticeably thicker crust than all the cultures I've owned to present.
I've collected airborne culture in Denver dozens of times that differ from culture collected from flour milled at home from wheat grain scooped from the bins at Whole Foods, with an unknown origin, which differs from culture cultivated straight from sacks of flour purchased elsewhere, also with unknown origins, and these differences have held through prolonged storage in wet, dry and frozen forms. Such is the awe-inspiring spectacle of sourdough culture performance. So go ahead and order some culture from the internet, or better yet, collect and cultivate it yourself, it only takes a few days. Revitalizations from culture-slumber handled with an sense of population concentrations protect the unique characteristics of the culture.
Now, on the other hand, if you were to take a tiny amount of weakened starter and use it to inoculate a large amount of flour that will have robust but inert organisms of its own, well then, that's a different matter altogether, an ah pity da foo who don't understand the deal going on with yeast culture armies.
Look at it this way, and I'll just guess here and exaggerate at numbers in order to beat the point. After the point is taken, then disregard the numbers because nobody really knows for sure and the numbers here are for show. When you bring a culture into full bubbling activity the number of organism in a cup or so is in the billions and billions, as Sagan would say. By contrast, the number of organisms in the air and on the grain and in the flour and on your hands is in the millions. The full-blown bubbling culture then is like the population of China X 100 overwhelming the population Tibet. Whatever manages to survive such an onslaught will be completely overwhelmed. Even a weak and exhausted culture contains a greater concentration of organisms than the surface organisms on flour or the air.
When restarting a languished and weakened culture do so with a tiny amount of flour possibly sugar, then once started up, double the additions increments as you proceed so that the concentration of original culture always overwhelm whatever organisms are introduced. There is scant chance any noticeable alien trait will contaminate the purity of a protected culture. I can not be any more clear than this.
I can reaffirm, this bread up there ↑ tastes uniquely of Carl's 1847 Oregon trail, it's quite strong tasting, actually, because it has proofed for so long, even though the culture was weakened by prolonged damp storage and then fed with flour that contained its own organisms. Even though weakened by neglect, Carl's culture still overwhelmed them. Poor things, didn't stand a chance.
That'll be my story then and I'm stick'n with it.
Incidentally, the Antioch culture that my brother collected for me is my favorite of all time. It's a story in itself told here on these pages. The culture is noticeably more virile and bakes to a thinner crust than the SF culture I own, which is among my least favorite, and I've had SF sourdough culture five times. I still have some but never use it. Apparently, SF culture had a better marketing director.
The culture I collected on Maui is also more virile than SF. It was collected in just a few windy hours and fed it initially with flour purchased on Maui but originating from who-knows-where. The baked bread has a different, slightly tan color, even though it's been fed repeatedly with flour purchased in Denver ever since, but also with an unknown origin. It's been years now and it remains uniquely Maui with distinctly different flavor and with noticeably thicker crust than all the cultures I've owned to present.
I've collected airborne culture in Denver dozens of times that differ from culture collected from flour milled at home from wheat grain scooped from the bins at Whole Foods, with an unknown origin, which differs from culture cultivated straight from sacks of flour purchased elsewhere, also with unknown origins, and these differences have held through prolonged storage in wet, dry and frozen forms. Such is the awe-inspiring spectacle of sourdough culture performance. So go ahead and order some culture from the internet, or better yet, collect and cultivate it yourself, it only takes a few days. Revitalizations from culture-slumber handled with an sense of population concentrations protect the unique characteristics of the culture.
Now, on the other hand, if you were to take a tiny amount of weakened starter and use it to inoculate a large amount of flour that will have robust but inert organisms of its own, well then, that's a different matter altogether, an ah pity da foo who don't understand the deal going on with yeast culture armies.
Look at it this way, and I'll just guess here and exaggerate at numbers in order to beat the point. After the point is taken, then disregard the numbers because nobody really knows for sure and the numbers here are for show. When you bring a culture into full bubbling activity the number of organism in a cup or so is in the billions and billions, as Sagan would say. By contrast, the number of organisms in the air and on the grain and in the flour and on your hands is in the millions. The full-blown bubbling culture then is like the population of China X 100 overwhelming the population Tibet. Whatever manages to survive such an onslaught will be completely overwhelmed. Even a weak and exhausted culture contains a greater concentration of organisms than the surface organisms on flour or the air.
When restarting a languished and weakened culture do so with a tiny amount of flour possibly sugar, then once started up, double the additions increments as you proceed so that the concentration of original culture always overwhelm whatever organisms are introduced. There is scant chance any noticeable alien trait will contaminate the purity of a protected culture. I can not be any more clear than this.
I can reaffirm, this bread up there ↑ tastes uniquely of Carl's 1847 Oregon trail, it's quite strong tasting, actually, because it has proofed for so long, even though the culture was weakened by prolonged damp storage and then fed with flour that contained its own organisms. Even though weakened by neglect, Carl's culture still overwhelmed them. Poor things, didn't stand a chance.
That'll be my story then and I'm stick'n with it.
Thank you for all of your answers. I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma. The book mentioned it, which is what sparked my interest, but did not go into such detail. I am shocked at the simplicity of it all. I think that I am going to sample my own private Idaho air!
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