Cocoa powder and other unconventional starter foods?
https://www.sourdough.co.uk/chocolate-starter-microbial-analysis/ [1]
I stumbled across this page a while back that explained how creating a sourdough starter with cocoa powder would innoculate it with certain strains of lactobacilli that produce a milder, sweeter levain. I was intrigued and tried to do more research on cocoa powder starters but couldn't find anything other than that one website, not terribly surprising given how expensive I'd imagine a cocoa powder starter diet to be. Still, it got me wondering if there were another non-grain foods that one could feed a starter to give it certain taste or levaining properties and after some searching, I found a few other examples including potato flakes and nut flours (for gluten-free starters). I'm wondering if these foods would noticably change the flavor of the final loaf but only out of curiosity; I have no intention of testing it for myself lol. Anyone else heard of or tried out some unconventional starter foods and noted a difference in performance?