Greg Carpenter wrote:
>>...even in a sanitized environment, starters that are given the same
refreshment will become similar.<<
So that throws all the starter information about starters dating back to
whenever right out the window.
>>Take pieces of two of your starters and give them the same refreshment
schedule for 2 weeks. Put them in similar containers (clean, of course).
Use the same amounts of the same flour and water (at the same
temperatures), leave them next to each other on the same counter to ferment
at the same time for the same amount of time. After 2 weeks bake the same
recipe with each starter. Don't do anything to one that you don't do to
the other. You'll get the same bread.<<
So a starter can be no older than two weeks, interesting.
So this whole San Francisco thing is a farce, different water, different
flour, so the thing changes every two weeks and there is nothing they can
do about it. Some of those places claim their cultures are 150 years old.
Your saying Sourdough Internatioal and others selling starters with claims
of the starters being from days gone by are all bogus. Even if they use
lab conditions to propagate the starter, the starter they start with can
only be two weeks old, they should be sued! Poor ole Carl Griffith is
gonna turn over in his grave to find out his 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough
Starter <http://home.att.net/~carlsfriends/> passed down in his family for
generations and now keep going by his freinds changes every two weeks. All
those folks that came from the "old country" and brought family starters
that they had passed down for gernerations just weren't smart enough to
realize their bread was different every two weeks, all that trouble for
nothing.
I know I'm glad to find this out. I will throw all my starters away and
start new ones since they will be the same anyway.
Makes one wonder where all this symbiotic relationship crap came from to
begin with. I guess it is silly to think that one organism can supply
something unique to another and that organism returns the favor by
supplying something the other guy wants to the exclusion of others that
want to get in on the good thing.
Now we all know.
Ed