Unique Sourdough from “Wild” yeast ... Is it possible?
Having successfully made a variety of SD loaves from various starters, I thought I’d try capturing the “wild” stuff, with hopes of coming up with something unique, visions of the great San Francisco sourdoughs (based, purportedly on a yeast found only there ... tho I’ve read it has also been found as far away as Africa!). So, on a fishing trip to the wilds of Canada, I harvested from the ambient atmosphere, and built a culture. I even went so far as to feed the culture only with water from the lake (figuring there must be some of the same wild yeast in the water ... couldn’t hurt) which I had brought home several gallons of ( frozen) to keep the starter going for a year. The ultimate goal was to impress my fishing buddies with flavorful, uniquely flavored Basket Lake Sourdough bread on our next annual trip.
I religiously fed that starter, using a good stone ground flour and the Basket Lake water for six months, then baked a loaf. It was OK, but nothing much in the way of “unique”. I persisted. After a year, on our return to the fishing camp, I again baked a loaf, and served to my fishing partners. I was complimented with the requisite “Oohs” and “Ahhs”, but think those were mostly directed at the tale describing the process, more so than any unique flavor. It was OK, too.
So here is my question: Is a uniquely flavored Sourdough from “wild” yeast even possible? Won’t whatever yeast is on the several pounds of flour used In culturing a starter over time overpower the native stuff ( not to mention whatever other organisms are introduced from a water source ... in retrospect I cringe at the thought of what I may have been introducing via the raw lake water)
Weather or not the flavor was unique, the experiment was fun. I still have a bit of that starter frozen in fridge ...
I think, but have no experimental data to backup, that the flour has the greatest affect on the microflora. But I am interested in the opinions of others...
Dan
I tend to agree, Dan. After all, assuming the water is sterile (excluding lake water!), then when you build a starter, the microorganisms must have come from somewhere, and it's most likely to be from the flour.
That's why I always make a point of feeding my starter with the same flour blend every time (50/50 wholegrain/white BF) and always ensure that I use the same brands of flour.
Lance
Quite a few years ago I saw a video on the Boudin bakery in San Francisco. The head baker laughed at the thought of transplanting their starter (mother dough) to other geographical locations, stating that the immigrant starter would lose the unique flavor over time and become like any other starter grown from scratch in that new location. Last year I saw a more recent video celebrating the start-up of the new Sacramento branch of the Boudin bakery, complete with special delivery ceremony marking the arrival of the starter culture to that new location. Go figure.
I am lucky, I guess. On the map below, I live just about between Fresno and Bakersfield. :)
Unfortunately we also get SF's air pollution, too.
While certainly there are many species and types of yeast in the world, I wonder how many of those are truly relevant from a baking perspective. The information I've seen has indicated that the same small number of yeasts are dominant in bread all over the world.
It's much like the old-fashioned mystique/superstition of things like "Swedish steel". Back when that term was magical, it was not exactly known why that particular steel was so good - it just was, and everybody knew it. Today, if you got exactly the same steel, it would be exactly as good as it ever was - but now a lot more is known about why it behaved so well, and it can be essentially duplicated by anyone with the knowledge, materials, and equipment. We are gradually discovering similar things about bread - that it's not as magical as it once seemed, and that we can identify what creates desirable characteristics and duplicate it. Not that it's easy, and not that it isn't complex - there IS a lot going on - but not magic and not unique.
I'm saying that the quest for uniqueness is nothing but a distraction, that you'll get a lot farther on a quest for quality instead.
My understanding that the majority of the yeast is from the flour. A far lesser amount comes from the environment. Have a read of this article https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/11/12/665655220/sourdough-hands-how-bakers-and-bread-are-a-microbial-match - it was an interesting read.
The lactobacilli sanfranciscensis is not unique to the San Francisco area, it has that name because it was discovered there. The sanfranciscensis is worldwide and takes time to emerge in a new starter. Here is an extract from Debra Winks article about it:
No L. sanfranciscensis appears by forty-eight hours, though: these will occur only after repeated refreshments. Peter Stolz told me that it takes about two weeks of repeated inoculations to get a good 'sanfranciscensis' sourdough.