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Re:How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely? by dragontamer on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @12:09PM (#20878569)
> In a similar way, I've wondered how many times someone discovered how to make cheese, and failed to sell the idea to others. "You left milk in a sheepskin bladder for how long, and you want us to eat it? No thanks, pass the chicken"

I used to think about cheese and yogurts as strange, but honestly the "discovery" that mold is edible is more fundamental.

Anyone who has eaten a good sourdough bread knows that the secret to good sourdough is... to leave it out until the good tasting natural molds start to grow on it.

I think it is a relatively natural leap to go from natural-mold bread (wheat + sugar + water + time) to natural-mold cheese and yogurts (milk + time).

Re:How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely? by groby_b on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @12:56PM (#20879086)
fwiw: Both cheese and sourdough require lactobacillus, not molds. (And lactobacillus has actually antifungal properties - mold being a fungus, that doesn't bode well for "natural mold")

So, no, mold isn't edible. And it isn't part of bread. If your starter shows mold, you have seriously messed up. (Some cheeses do use mold, though. Blue cheese, Brie, Camembert,...)

Re:How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely? by dragontamer on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @01:08PM (#20879205)
Interesting.

Yeast is a fungus. Sourdough bread has always been described to me as "natural yeast", which I assumed was a fungus microorganism.

EDIT: Seems like Sourdough Type I has Saccharomyces exiguus, Candida milleri, or Candida holmii as its fungus. Perhaps it isn't "Mold", but those aren't bacteria either. In any case, the ancient, or even middle-ages cook, wouldn't have known about these different microscopic microorganisms when they created sourdough, cheese, or yogurt.

The growth of Lactobacillus is still important apparently for sourdough. In any case, the idea of micro-organisms changing the taste (for the better) of various recipes would have been discovered by the first baker of leavened bread, a truly ancient discovery. Yogurt and Cheese are simple extensions of the principle.

Re:How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely? by slavik81 on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @03:19PM (#20880512)
You allude to this, but it's been explained to me that the sourness of sourdough comes from the (wild) bacteria, while the rise of the dough comes from the wild yeast.

When you feed your sourdough starter, you discard most of it and supply fresh flour and water. This sets up ideal conditions for growth. The yeast is faster to grow than the bacteria, so the ratio of yeast to bacteria is higher immediately after feeding. Thus, you can control the sourness of the dough through those feedings and their timing relative to preparing the final bread dough.

The microorganisms should be invisible. You just see their effects on the mixture. Your starter is probably good if it doubles in size within a few hours of feeding (due to carbon dioxide production by the yeast). If there's visible mold, that's very bad. The yeast should be strong enough to defeat any stray mold long before it can grow enough to be visible. I would just throw that batch out and start from scratch.

Re:How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely? by gbrown on Wednesday September 04, 2019 @07:15PM (#20882323)
Your terms have already been corrected below, but eating moldy bread is a good way to get ergot poisoning.