March 24, 2020 - 6:18am
Can viruses take foot on sourdough starters?
Hi,
due to this worldwide pandemic I have a concern: can viruses in general take foot on a fresh sourdough starter?
Imagine that your flour, or counter, or bowl or your hands were contaminated, what chances are there that a virus can transmit to and survive in the dough?
Before I ask, yes. I'm paranoid.
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I doubt it could survive long in the environment of a sourdough culture, the acidity would most likely create an environment that it could not survive in. It would also not be able to survive the baking process if I'm not mistaken. People are going a bridge too far with this...seems like the apocalypse to some.
Long time. Welcome back Nico. We hope you and yours are doing ok over there.
Baking will kill the virus for sure. But I would be much more concerned about virus contaminating your flour. Flour ends up in the air during mixing and if the flour is SARS-Cov-2-contaminated, you and anyone in the room is inhaling it. Don’t give SARS-Cov-2 wings on your flour!
Be safe. Forza!
Tom
Note added: SARS-Cov-1 (96% identical at RNA level to SARS-Cov-2 that causes the current COVID-19 disease) was shown here to be easily killed by 30 min @ 75˚C (167˚F). So oven heat is a very effective SARS-Cov-2 killer.
I second this. So just make sure that you're following basic food safety procedure when making bread: wash your hands before and after handling ingredients or dough, store flour in a sterile and sealed container, clean any countertops that raw flour or dough as touched, and don't eat raw dough or flour. These are just good safety precautions to take anyway, regardless of any pandemic.