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Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

I had a starter for several years that was descended from the one kept by Dick Proenekke [1]. He lived alone in a cabin that he built himself--by hand--deep in the Alaskan bush. He made sourdough pancakes daily and his original starter came from a friend of his back in town. Someone related to this person sells the starter (on a wooden spoon) that you can buy [2] and use to create your own descendant.

There's a fascinating PBS documentary on him that you can watch on YouTube, if you're interested: [3]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke

[2] http://richardproenneke.com/heirloom_sourdough_starter_spoon

[3] https://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss

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Correct me if I'm wrong but if you get sourdough made at some other place after couple of weeks your local culture will take over thus sourdough will loose that other place uniqueness so to speak. But I'm not an expert just something I remember when I was interested in sourdough and pizza making.

I think that's a feature, not a bug :)

The sourdough that comes from your kitchen is going to be unique to that place. Even moving across town can have a huge difference. It's a built-in thumbprint that makes sure that no one can ever really make grandmas pizza bottoms, or baguettes, quite the same...

You are correct. Your method of keeping the starter will over time select the culture that is best suited for your method of keeping, from available gene pool.

Reminds me of a story I heard of a beer brand (forgot which one) that opened a new factory which was heavily modernised, but decided to take the wooden roof from the old one and install it above the copper kettles in the new location to make sure the environmental bacterial cultures would remain the same to keep their "flavour identity"

Anecdotally, my experience has been that while yeast cultures are durable, you can also get some maladaptive selection going from time to time; eg, if you are too irregular in feeding your starter, you might end up with a slow-growing culture rather than the fast-growing culture you get from feeding your starter twice a day and want for a good rise. Your starter will still be alive, but not as useful until you start feeding it constantly again and get that fast-growing culture established again.

He does his own narration in the film ("Alone in the Wilderness") as well.

That's not him, the narrator is Bob Swerer Jr who reads from Dicks autobiography. There are recordings of Dick you can watch and he sounds nothing like the narrators voice in Alone in the wilderness.

Really interesting, thanks for the links. I would be curious to see how that starter behaves differently then mine.

I really need a good microscope to analyse the different doughs in detail.

I have a colleague who sequences the genomes of the yeast in her sourdough starter to characterize how it changes over time :)

That's amazing! What are here most important learnings? TLDR :D.

That is an absolutely incredible combination of food and history. How did you like the results?

The starter was great but it's just sourdough starter. My palette is not refined enough to taste the difference between various sourdough cultures. Use the instructions in OP's link and it will probably be just as good. I think it's neat to have a starter from a place that's special to you. You could make one in your hometown, or in a favorite vacation spot, a place famous for its sourdough (like San Francisco), etc.

Sourdough cultures are not only about how they produce taste directly but also about how the yeast and bacteria interact and how quickly they grow. For example, yeast that grows faster will produce different results than yeast that grows slower. It depends on you whether you want fast or slow rise times.

For example, I prefer slower rise times, my doughs frequently ferment at room temperature for 24 and even up to 48 hours in extreme cases and still produce nice bread.

I do this for aroma but also for convenience. I like to be able to shape the dough in the evening and don't worry about it and put it in the oven in the morning. It grows so slowly that it can easily accommodate few hours of change in schedule or 1 or 2 digrees shift in temperature.

Here in Germany many people trade starters across villages. It would be interesting to have a scientific study on the differences. Maybe there is different bacteria/yeast in the different villages?

The yeast isn't just different between villages, it's different from street to street.

Wild yeast is everywhere, and very different from place to place. To my understanding a little jar of one culture stands no chance against the evolutionary pressures outside it, so within a week or two an imported starter will return to whatever yeast exist in that specific area.

Trading across villages would be a really good way to keep 'new' flavours coming in :)

The type of flour and the temperature it’s kept at make the most difference imho. You can notice a change in the smell as seasons change.

That would be really interesting to have in the recipes as well. Did you conduct any A/B tests?

More or less - bulking up the starter and putting it in the fridge (7 degrees) but leaving some in a new batch of bread at 2o degrees. If you try bulking up a starter with high grade white flour you notice a difference pretty fast too.

He also contributed science with data taken from the field during his outings, when he wasn't busy being a badass

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