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A comment on Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egyptian sourdough.

Re:Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egypt... by lurker2001 on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @12:03AM (#24915062)
these 4500yr old yeast cultures are somewhat misleading. Your starter will adapt to your local environment, picking up whichever yeasts are in the air / grain you use.
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Re:Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egypt... by beached_whale on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @12:26AM (#24915217)
The twitter feed has a load of info and this article talks to it a bit more, but great care went into preventing that https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2019/08/14/would-you-eat...
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Re:Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egypt... by lgeorget on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @03:09AM (#24916079)
They sterilized the flour with an autoclave before feeding it to the yeast. https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/124116036901332172...
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Re:Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egypt... by seanwilson on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @02:24AM (#24915854)
> picking up whichever yeasts are in the air

I'm not sure this is actually true to the extent it is usually mentioned e.g.

"Yeast grow on grain and arrive with the flour. One gram of flour contains about 13,000 yeast cells. I don’t deny that there are a few yeast in the environment that find their way into the starter, but by and large the yeast that will survive in the starter are the ones that like the menu there, i.e, the ones that have a taste for grain. Sure enough, they’re the ones that were on that grain in the first place. "

http://www.wildyeastblog.com/sourdough-stories-myth/

or more discussion: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37259/mythbusters-grain-yea...

I'm sure I read about some kind of experiment involving creating a sourdough starter with sanitised air but I can't find it... Does anyone have something more scientific?

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Re:Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egypt... by CydeWeys on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @10:58AM (#24919489)
Not if you take the kind of measures they're taking to maintain a fully sterile, sealed environment.
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