I haven't yet gotten a sourdough starter but I've been thinking about it. I can get a starter from different sources like the King Arthur flour company or the 1847 oregon trail starter but my question is when I get a starter from somewhere else won't it mix with the wild yeasts that are local to my area and cease to be the same starter? Or will the already existing yeast outbreed the wild yeast? I am just wondering if you can maintain two distinct starters or if they both would eventually morph into the same thing.
Thanks for the help.
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From the reading I've done it sounds like your starter will be an 1847 oregon starter for a while, at least. There's that whole symbiosis between the yeasts and the bacteria, where certain yeasts feed off certain bacterias and those bacterias fight the other bacterias. Some of the reading I've done suggests that because you have certain yeasts and bacterias in large quantities they will effectively keep out all the other yeasts and bacterias.
Theory sounds like... If you keep your starter good and healthy it will stay (basically) the same as when you got it, with bacteria reproducing and yeast reproducing and generally staying the same. But, if you introduce other large quantities of yeast or bacteria that could change the balance of your starter adversely affecting the taste.
I haven't purchased any starters or been sent starters made in another region so I can't tell you my personal experience. Sorry.
If someone wanted to keep a starter strain pure, they'd have to be able to duplicate the source conditions and you know that would be expensive. Consider the expense of recreating the mineral content and pH levels of the water for your starter. Next, you'd have to obtain flour from the same batch used in building the starter. This is important because there are yeast spores on the flour, whether they be from wheat or rye, and you'd need to maintain the dominant strain. Additionally, you would have to provide purified air to minimize air borne infection and mimic the original climate conditions as well. It's an expensive proposition by any guess. Unless your new starter's yeast strain is the mega-beast of all wild yeast strains, sooner or later, your starter will change slowly if you're not willing to go to extremes to protect it from the outside world.
But that's OK as long as you maintain your starter with a reasonable amount of attention. My starter is derived from the Wagon Trail starter from NYB. It lives on any unbleached flour I've ever fed to it. Now that it's summer here in Kansas, it is REALLY active requiring that I go back to my books and sources to learn how to slow it down to a more practical speed. As far as I'm concerned, that's all part of the craft of baking. My bread tastes good to me and no one is turning down any gift loaves yet.
Get a starter and learn as much as you can about baking good bread. Learn how to manipulate your starter to build a whole wheat or rye starter from a white flour starter. Dry some of your starter as a backup or "Plan B" for the off chance you need to start over. Don't worry about the starter's pedigree, you'll enjoy the experience so much more when you can do that.
This recent posting here sourdough.com/blog/something-air%E2%80%A6
Moves from London to the south coast of England and the starter errupts with flavour.