"Seeding" a new Tartine bread starter with existing culture?
I have been baking breads for years with my sourdough starter that began it's life in as a bit of dried starter from the Friends of Carl network of sourdough culture conservationists. This starter has been vigorous and forgiving, always springing back no matter how much I neglect it (within reason, of course).
I recently read (four of five times) the first few chapters of Chad Robertson's "Tartine Bread" and was wondering...He has the reader build a starter from flour and water over a couple of weeks. Is there any reason why I shouldn't expedite this process by adding a tiny bit of my existing starter to the 50/50 bread/whole wheat flour mix that he recommends? I like to always do a thing "by the book" first, so I know that I've not introduced some weak link in the process before I change things up.
My questions stems from a broader confusion about sourdough. I've read that once you have a culture going for a few months (a few years in my case) in becomes "yours." For example, if you had a sourdough culture shipped to you from Egypt and one from Alaska, within a few months of use these would become the same culture after picking up yeasts and bacteria in your baking environment no matter what efforts you made to keep the cultures separate. I can't remember which of my many baking books I read this in, but it was definitely in a book by a pro baker, not a forum post.
So if that's true, it stands to reason that it shouldn't matter if I give the starter a kick=start so I'm not chancing it with just a mix of flour and water and hoping for the best.
Thoughts?
Thanks in advance - Chris