Life expectancy of a starter

in rainbows
Hello! My family has kept a sourdough starter for many years active (more than ten). We cook sourdough bread every 2 days. However, recently i heard from a food technologist that the quality of a sourdough starter decreases every time we use it cause some bacteria multiply and prevail in the environment of the starter. So the microbiology flora which at the start is so rich with many different bacteria and yeast (wild flora) is being replaced by very few species of bacteria. Is this true? Cause all this time i thought that the good thing with our bread was that our starter was old. The bread that we make however is delicious!
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panfresca 2011 October 11

I think your last statement - that the bread you make from the starter is delicious - is really all that counts. 

If you go beyond that, there is an extremely complex world of microbiology going on, one of which we are only distant observers. I'm somewhat doubtful of the blanket comment that a particular starter's quality "decreases every time we use it" - there are many people using starters which are very, very old who would by that argument be using a starter with virtually no quality left.

I have yet to see a definitive, complete guide to the microbiological life of starters - including what happens to them over an extended period. The best that I have seen anywhere are Debra Wink's excellent posts on The Fresh Loaf, which dispel a lot of myths and give a good, if complex picture of what goes on in the creation of a starter. I don't think she covers this side of things though - how a starter changes over time and with the introduction of different feed sources and conditions.

It might be interesting if you were to create a new starter from scratch, and compare the results with your mature starter.

farinam's picture
farinam 2011 October 11

Hello Rainbow,

I agree with Panfresca.  The starter is a dynamic that is probably constantly changing as 'new' yeasts and bacteria are introduced at each feeding.  If a better adapted one turns up then it will eventually predominate (all things being equal).

A two hundred year old starter is a bit like Captain Cook's axe - three new heads and ten new handles - but still the same axe.

This might have no basis in fact, but I heard somewhere that the prohibition on leavened bread during lent was actually related to the annual renewal of the starter culture so the idea of "starting again" might not be that new.

As long as you are happy with the bread that you produce, I can think of no good reason to change but as they say, a change is as good as a holiday ;)

Farinam

gongoozler 2011 October 11

 The Boudin Bakery in San Francisco has been using the same mother dough since 1849 and their bread doesn't seem to vary too much.

If your starter was created and has lived in the same environment it will surely always have been subject to the same bacteria.

Whatever, I agree with the others: all that matters is that it tastes good (it's possible to get too scientific IMO.

 

gongoozler

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