"I was so poor, when I was a kid, I had a sourdough starter as a pet."
Posted on 05/16/2018 3:37:39 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Ione Christensen’s starter, one of the oldest strains around, is being added to a collection in a Belgian ‘library’ with 84 samples from 20 countries
Every Saturday night for the last sixty years, Ione Christensen has followed the same routine to prepare waffles for breakfast the following morning: she measures out two cups of flour and two cups of warm water, then she reaches into her fridge to bring out her sourdough starter.
“It’s a family pet, if you will,” she said from her home in Canada’s Yukon territory.
Like any pet, the starter needs to be constantly fed – in this case, with flour and water.
But the spongy blend of wild yeast and bacteria has far outlived any ordinary pet: at 120 years, the sourdough is much older than Christensen, who is 84.
Earlier this month, Christensen baked for a new guest: Karl De Smedt, a Belgian baker, who scours the globe for new sourdough strains to add to his “library” in Belgium.
So far, the collection in the town of St Vith contains 84 samples in refrigerated glass jars from 20 countries, including Mexico, Greece and Japan. De Smedt’s archive is meant to both showcase geographically diverse varieties of yeast and preserve a growing collection for future generations to study.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
As a scientist, I would be interested in analyzing samples of these yeasts. There must be considerable genetic drift going on, which should be quite pronounced in the older strains.
"I was so poor, when I was a kid, I had a sourdough starter as a pet."
“De Smedt will bring a sample of Christensen’s starter – labeled “106” – back to the library and also provide some to Italian researchers, in order for them to sequence and study the DNA profile of the sourdough.” (from the article)
I’ve kept starters going for several months...I think I kept one going for over a year. I find it a bit too inconvenient eventually because I go through phases where I’ll not even be using it for long periods of time and having to feed it and keep the container clean, etc.
I’ve started my own starter and also purchased King Arthur’s and kept it going for months. King Arthur’s is a great one to start with. I think it’s like $8 or so and you can get a nice already developed depth of flavor right off the bat. That way, if you decide to stop feeding it, you know you can still get a new starter from King Arthur, in just a few days which they’ve kept going for well over a century.
Make some beer with it!
Thanks, I will look out for when they publish results. It should be fascinating, in a nerdy way.
Smells like a case of cultural appropriation to me.
Sell it. 1 million bucks.
That reminds me....I need to get my starter out of the fridge and feed it. I need to make more bread. Homemade sourdough bread doesn’t last long around here.
I bought one over the Internet. Oregon Trail sourdough starter. It came to me dried on some coarse paper. In that dried form I think it keeps for a long time and you don’t have to feed it.
Marcia
Heh, the very first horror movie that I remember seeing.
Either that or Tarantula ... they both came around in the same period for me (as I remember)
Fungus!
Shared, thanks for posting.
Ah ha! I have a sourdough story. On my trip to Alaska, met a trapper and had dinner in his home. His wife served the most delish sourdough bread. B/c I raved so much about it, she gave me a large dollop to take home; they claimed that it was 60 y/o, and they had got it from a trapper who kept it in the waystations along his line.
Well, when I got it home, I put the sponge in a lovely crock with a nice rubber seal [in the back of the fridge.] Used it several times to make some pretty good bread.
Got home from work one day, and the housekeeper proudly announced, she had cleaned the fridge,
My heart sunk. Yep, she threw it out. A piece of history gone.
She said it smelled *disgusting* and didn’t look *right*.
A sad, sad day. :( {{{sobbing}}}
How sad.
As a scientist, I would be interested in analyzing samples of these yeasts.
Mmmmm. Brownies.
“I was so poor, when I was a kid, I had a sourdough starter as a pet.”
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