On 25 Jan 2006 17:57:22 -0800, Will > wrote:
>
>
> Back to your starter question... I think that the origin of the starter
> is orders of magnitude less important than how it is maintained and
> amplified for dough. I have a small stable of starters that I have
> built or acquired over the years.



I tend to agree with an earlier poster that the number of critters in the
flour is so small that they won't take over a healthy culture. Of ocurse,
many hobbyists don't have healthy cultures.

Still, the flour IS important. Flour is not a readilly quantifiable
substance. It's made from different wheat strains, grown in different
areas, and it is different. And these differences are important to the
final product. More ash will tend to produce a more sour bread.

What an organism eats can affect its taste. For instance, French farmers
force feed their geese special foods and herbs to make the goose liver taste
better for making pate. American hunters prize boars that have been eating
acorns. Many nursing mothers can attest that their babies can tell when
mom's been eating food that's too spicy.

If a macro-organism can be changed in a short period by what it eats, I have
no trouble believing a micro-organism can also be changed.

If you want to make bread like Jone's bakery, it may be more important to
find out what kind of flour they are using and how they make the bread than
to get some of their starter. If you are trying to makea San Francisco
style bread, you probably want some Giusto's flour. They are on-line and
they do ship. http://www.giustos.com

You might also want to look at Samartha's home page, he has put the formula
and process Dr. Sugihara got from the San Francisco bakeries on-line. It
works very nicely, even without Guisto's flour. (One of these days, I'll do
the same. The formula, and good text, was in the April 1970 Baker's
Digest.) Look at http://www.samartha.net/SD/recipes/SF-01.html

Mike