[HN Gopher] Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter
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Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter
Author : axiomdata316
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-02-10 02:09 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (carlsfriends.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (carlsfriends.net)
| voisin wrote:
| I understand that the microbes in a starter change quite quickly
| to the microbes in the surrounding environment. I.e. that buying
| a starter from a distant place doesn't mean you are getting the
| terroir of that location. I cannot at the moment find where I
| read this but I think I've come across it several times and that
| it is sort of common knowledge.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| From the FAQ: "Could local environmental organisms change the
| starter? Possibly. Some microbiologists did a study on how
| stable established strong and healthy starters are and they
| found that essentially, a strong starter out-competes other
| organisms in the environment and keeps its characteristics.
| This is what we have found with our starter. It continues with
| its characteristics since we have been providing it."
| darkerside wrote:
| Wouldn't it then outcompetes those microbes outside of the
| starter itself, and change the local terroir over time?
| irrational wrote:
| Of course the ones wanting you to pay them money would say
| that.
| mrb wrote:
| Ah yes, the corruption power of all the money they must be
| making with that extra $0.05 when they ask to mail $2.00
| for an international stamp that costs $1.95...
| 0ct4via wrote:
| Let's take (over) 65,000 starts distributed since 2000 on
| the Carl's friends site[1] - and call it 65k for rounding.
|
| That's 65k starters, with your negative unhelpful comment
| assuming $0.05 / 5C/ "profit" per starter.
|
| That's 325,000C/ - or $3250 USD "made" in nearly a quarter
| of a century.
|
| That "profit" discounts 24 years of:
|
| - PO Box rental - web hosting - domain fees - labels and
| bags for starters to go out in - envelopes, if the one
| provided isn't suitable or sufficient - electricity for
| refrigeration and freezing of starters - ingredients for
| feeding and maintaining the starters
|
| $3250 over 24 years gives a mean of $135 per year --
| obviously this will fluctuate from year to year, and costs
| have risen since the early 00's -- likewise there have
| probably been more requests as the internet has grown more
| popular, and the word of Carl's friend spread further.
|
| If you think ~$135 (or even ~$100 on a slow year) is
| sufficient for everything above -- never mind the time and
| work donated by the growers and keeper of the mail box --
| then you're very much mistaken.
|
| Furthermore, if you think they're being "paid" for their
| work out of that, your misanthropic and "negative nancy"
| response, is sorely mistaken.
|
| Of course, all of this presumes that every item is
| international shipping, and paid for in the "substituted"
| two $1 bills, or IRC.
|
| 1. For US domestic shipping, they just ask for a 63C/ self-
| addressed and stamped envelope [2]
|
| 2. For your profit-implying "they want you to pay them"
| comment, see:
|
| "Requests sent outside the US require $1.55 US postage *or*
| substitute two U.S. one-dollar bills or an IRC
| (International Reply Coupon)" [2]
|
| Note the "or" part -- it's a choice, not a mandate.
|
| Firstly, you can send them what it costs, $1.55, as you
| like - via PayPal, cash in an envelope, whatever. Their
| "two $1 bills" option is handy for places like Canada which
| may have US note currency -- and the IRC is useful in
| places that don't have US currency in regular circulation.
|
| Secondly, many places don't actually sell international
| reply coupons any more. While the UPU mandates their
| acceptance and swapping for postage, they don't mandate the
| sale of IRCs [3]. For example, Royal Mail (in the UK)
| hasn't sold them since December 2011 -- therefore requiring
| the use of PayPal, finding $2 in bills somehow, or sending
| the $1.95 in change.
|
| If you think Carl's friends have somehow become massively
| rich over the past quarter-century by _checks notes_
| mailing out carefully-maintained 1847 sourdough starter,
| likely at a loss... please let us know how you 've worked
| that one out.
|
| [1] http://carlsfriends.net [2]
| http://carlsfriends.net/source.html [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon
| NaOH wrote:
| The typical changeover in a sourdough culture moving locations
| is about one month, assuming regular feeding. As a professional
| bread baker I am disappointed that this fact is often
| withheld/obscured by people selling portions of their starters.
| If there weren't significant location-based differences then,
| for example, the distinctive San Francisco sourdough flavor
| could be replicated by sourdough bakers anywhere. Likewise,
| Puratos--a company generally known for its manufacture and
| sales of baking mixes--wouldn't maintain a sourdough library,
| akin to the Svalbard seed vault.
|
| The best reason to acquire an existing sourdough culture would
| be to start with a healthy, vibrant culture. I think the gain
| is minimal, both in time and labor. And the person who will
| typically have a lasting interest in sourdough bread baking is
| someone who is drawn to the whole process and not after that
| type of shortcut, especially during the initial learning
| stages.
| echelon wrote:
| Another way to look at this is that your existing cultures
| can be invaded, colonized, and replaced over time.
|
| The thing you think is constant and unchanging might be
| metamorphosing just as much as your hometown in the face of
| real estate development.
|
| Nobody keeps these in labs or -40 C and below freezers, so
| they'll absolutely face invasive evolutionary pressures.
| geokon wrote:
| I heard that "the distinctive San Francisco sourdough flavor"
| was due to the water. The Hetchhetchy water in SF has a very
| distinctive taste. One of the only cities I go to regularly
| where the tap water tastes amazing
| taveras wrote:
| http://carlsfriends.net/SourdoughFAQ/32-San-Francisco-
| Sourdo...
| sndean wrote:
| You can buy some of that Lactobacillus species from ATCC:
| https://www.atcc.org/products/27651 They also sell
| bacterial pathogens and other things useful for
| researchers, so that's pretty interesting (at least to
| me). I never really think about the overlap of food and
| microbes.
|
| It's also called Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis in
| some places. I can't quickly tell which is the more
| recent naming and what lead to that change. It's lactic
| acid bacteria regardless.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I think the idea would be that you only use small portions of
| the starter, not the whole thing. I'm familiar with keeping
| yeast cultures for brewing and this seems to be the technique
| if you are keeping live cultures.
|
| Get your sample, split it up, and keep track of the
| generations.
| deaddodo wrote:
| The only way you can keep a "pure" influence would be to use
| the entire sample donated to you by the company (and even
| then, there will be local influence).
|
| Bread doesn't pick up a ton of bacteria during it's
| fermentation period, it's the feeding cycle where it will. If
| you split the culture into many small ones, you're just
| guaranteeing all of them will be supplanted the moment
| they're fed.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Can't you sterilize what you're feeding it? I don't get it.
| plorg wrote:
| Ken Forkish says basically this in Flour Salt Yeast, but I also
| assume it is relatively well known among the more empirically-
| minded bakers. In any case the flavors developed in the bread
| will have much more to do with both the hydration of the dough
| and the temperature it rises at (as I understand it these will
| affect the balance of acetic and lactic acid development as
| well as the CO2 and trace ethanol production in the starter).
| In Ken's book he asserts that the difference in flavor between
| sourdough in different places has more to do with local(ly-
| developed) tastes, recipes, and practices.
|
| My sense is that you would have to be a very practiced (that
| is, consistent) baker to notice the difference imparted by the
| possibility culture in your own bread.
| carlmr wrote:
| >Ken Forkish says basically this in Flour Salt Yeast
|
| To anybody reading this. I can not recommend this book
| enough. It takes you from making so so bread to amazing bread
| if you read it for a day or two.
| barsonme wrote:
| My only complaint is that his sourdough starter chapter has
| you make buckets of the stuff. Maybe it's supposed to make
| it more difficult to screw up, I dunno.
| deaddodo wrote:
| He makes everything at industrial yields and doesn't
| bother to adjust for home use/yields.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| And, protip: the secret is _bakers ' percentages_.
|
| That is, to scale a recipe up or down, hold the
| relationships of ingredients proportionate to that of
| flour, by mass.
|
| E.g., a typical starter is fed at a 100% ratio: 1 unit of
| flour to one unit of water. So, 100g, 1,000g, 200g,
| whatevs. Similarly for your dough, which is often
| described in terms of _hydration_. A very low hydration
| might be 50%, a typical novice dough about 60--65%
| (excellent for pizza crusts and rolls in my experience),
| 80% should start giving a very _open crumb_ (with large
| voids and bubbles), and 100%+ used for high whole-grain
| flour, or _very_ open-crumb breads. Higher hydration
| makes for more challenging handling, though with time
| most bakers develop a feel for this.
|
| There are of course a myriad of other factors, and one of
| the joys (or frustrations) of sourdough baking is
| exploring those parameters. My experience is that even my
| disasters taste amazing, though visual appearances may be
| less impressive. Amongst those: temperature (hugely
| significant for both starter and sponge/dough/proofing),
| proofing time (warm and cold/retarded), types of flour,
| age of flour, oven temperatures, humidity, and probably a
| whole lot more. Again, even when things don't go to plan,
| the results are almost always rewarding. When you do
| happen to hit the magic balance, it's amazing. My bad
| batches are still amongst the best bread I've ever eaten.
|
| Good baking books and online guides will discuss this.
| garof wrote:
| His follow up 'Evolutions in Bread' is scaled down for
| single loaves, either the round or in a bread pan.
| Including the starter. Also the discard problem is
| addressed.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I found Forkish's book to be skippable. A lot of that
| flufftype "writing about thoughts about food" content to
| increase the length, similar to what you might find on a
| web log.
|
| A good book on bread is called _Bread_ and it is by Jeffrey
| Hamelman, published by Wiley.
|
| He understands you might not know anything about bread. All
| recipes are well-explained and scaled to both the home
| kitchen and the professional bakery. No web log style
| writing to waste the reader's time.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > My sense is that you would have to be a very practiced
| (that is, consistent) baker to notice the difference imparted
| by the possibility culture in your own bread.
|
| The difference that San Francisco lactic bacteria impart on
| bread flavoring is obvious and pronounced. It does not take
| an expert or particularly trained taster to taste. It is a
| literal mutant strain of the bacteria.
|
| I do agree, however, that this statement is probably true of
| other regional varieties of naturally leavened breads.
| Assuming everything else is equal.
| irrational wrote:
| This is true. Just make your own. If you buy one and start
| feeding it, soon it will be identical to the one you could have
| made on your own. All it requires is flour and water and time.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| And by "time", to clarify, a week or two of regular (1x to 2x
| daily) feedings.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Unless you're baking 3+ times a week, it doesn't make sense
| to keep a constant fresh culture. This is the biggest
| deterrent to many people getting into it, in fact.
|
| If you want to bake occasionally, you can just refeed after
| using a portion, letting revitalize to between 70% and peak
| and tossing in the fridge for 1-2 weeks.
|
| Also, as a side addendum, if you're worried about using
| your culture at "peak strength", then just avoid the
| question altogether and just make an overnight preferment
| of some sort (sponge, poolish) from the culture.
| bluGill wrote:
| I make sourdough pancakes several times per week. This
| keeps my starter fresh. I don't measure, just an egg, a
| bit of oil (50-75ml) beat well then add starter until my
| bowel is around half full (500-600ml) and mix some more.
| Then disolve a couble scoups (10 ml) of baking soda in
| water (50-70ml) and mix in. Cook fast.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| These are delish, and you can absolutely play with the
| recipe.
| amluto wrote:
| I use baking powder for this. It works about as well
| (although you need more of it), but it minimizes the risk
| of localized areas of too much baking soda, which tastes
| quite nasty.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Sure, and I've had lags of days, weeks, or even months in
| using starter. _Too_ long and you risk mould formation,
| which I 've recently dealt with.
|
| In that case, I ended up starting over from some dried
| starter which has been sitting in the freezer since April
| 2020. A tablespoon of that with an otherwise typical feed
| (100g flour, 100g water), and about six feeds before the
| starter was back up to desired activity.
|
| "Discard" is a term that's relative to your starter batch
| itself. There are recipes for discard, one of the
| simplest is a "starter pancake", which I realised was
| pretty much a crumpet, and indeed adding about 1/2 tsp
| salt and 1 tsp baking soda gives the bubbly form of a
| familiar crumpet. Fry in butter or oil in a small frying
| pan or using crumpet rings, about 5 minutes per side. To
| prepare for eating, toast about 3--4 minutes.
|
| These may be eaten sweet (butter and jam) or savory
| (onions, eggs, tomatoes, etc.), as desired.
|
| There are collections of starter discard recipes.
|
| If you're only baking a few times weekly, storing your
| starter in the fridge is fine. For longer downtimes, I
| strongly recommend drying and freezing your starter once
| established. As I wrote elsewhere in this thread, _make
| backups_.
|
| It's also possible to feed daily and store the discard
| for a weekly batch of discard-friendly recipes (crumpets,
| English Muffins, sourdough pancakes, and numerous
| others).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Also to clarify: _creating_ a starter is different from
| _maintaining_ one.
|
| In the initial stage, your goal is to cultivate yeast in
| your source flour and/or environment (far more the former
| than the latter AFAIU), and have them reach a state where
| your starter is highly active 8--12 hours after a feeding
| or so. _That_ requires frequent feeding, 1x to 2x daily,
| for a week or two.
|
| _Once you 've achieved that goal_, your starter becomes
| far lower maintenance, and typically requires feeding
| only prior to use _and_ once a week or so as a
| maintenance process. (I 've found I can feed less
| frequently than this, while refrigerating a sealed jar of
| starter, but you risk losing the whole batch.)
|
| So, yes, you do need to go through a period of daily or
| twice-daily feedings initially. But you don't need to
| sustain that indefinitely.
|
| And again as noted by others, the removeed "discard"
| starter left over after a feeding can itself be used for
| quick and simple baking recipes.
|
| (When baking, that "discard" is the levain which you're
| adding to your dough or recipe.)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Where "local environment" is extraordinarily influenced by the
| flour you feed your starter with.
|
| Which itself is influenced by growing location and conditions,
| storage, transport, and distribution, etc.
|
| I'd be interested in seeing specific research on how much "wild
| yeast" and lactobacilli _outside_ of the feeder flour actually
| influences starter. My strong suspicion is that this is
| somewhat less than is often considered, if only because of the
| difficulty of starting one 's own sourdough from sterilised
| flour (bleached), which is to say, being highly dependent on
| wild yeast.
|
| The other factor I suspect is the evolution of one's own
| starter culture based on conditions (feed frequency,
| temperature, flour, storage conditions, light/darkness, etc.)
| in which it exists.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unpleached flour is easially available in the stores where I
| live. That is how I started my starter this summer.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Unbleached flour can work. It typically takes longer.
|
| Whole meal, or other flours (rye and spelt notably) can
| really "juice" the process. Rye seems to strongly encourage
| starter activity.
|
| Mixing even only 1/4 of an alternate (whole meal, rye,
| spelt) in with unbleached flour makes new starter
| development much faster, and can also help refresh an older
| starter.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I moved once, out into a desert area. The microbes in the new
| environment were so virulent and horrible that my starter was
| instantly destroyed.
|
| Every new starter I tried would flare up into great bubbles
| after one day, and would just stink to high heavens after 3. It
| looked like a great starter, but exuded the most revolting
| rotten smell.
|
| I tried bleaching all the containers. Changing flours. Storing
| it in a different place. Nothing. Something out there in the
| desert was ready each time.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| Have you tried radiation?
|
| https://hackaday.com/2018/05/12/a-vacuum-tube-and-
| barbecue-l...
| djur wrote:
| Did you try baking with it?
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I got some of this years ago - was a pretty good starter, but I'm
| not sure it is really anything different from whatever starter
| your neighbor might have available. If you don't have a neighbor
| or friend with a starter, years ago there was a thread on HN
| about people making their own starters with good success.
| gerad wrote:
| I've made my own starter a couple times. It's really no big
| deal. Takes a couple weeks of waiting but maybe an hour of
| total time over that two weeks.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| I've made my own! This was 15 years ago or so, in Los Angeles.
| It was fun as a hobby project; I started a bunch, harvesting
| wild yeasts from my kitchen, outdoors, etc. A couple turned out
| pretty yummy, a couple were pretty funky. But recently I bought
| some dried starter from a well-respected line and have been
| blown away with how much _better_ the starter we bought is
| compared to the wild harvested runs I tried. If a friend asked
| I would tell them it 's really not worth it to use a wild
| strain unless your hobby is microbiology... If your hobby is
| baking, stick with a known-good starter.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| > If a friend asked I would tell them it's really not worth
| it to use a wild strain unless your hobby is microbiology...
| If your hobby is baking, stick with a known-good starter.
|
| I really agree with this, given my own experiences, but I
| will say some of the best bread I ever had came from a chef
| who started his own at a wilderness camp. Anyone who came out
| to camp, he would share it, but unfortunately mine went bad
| after a while.
| yumraj wrote:
| Which one did you buy?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| King Arthur has a recipe for those interested:
|
| <https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2012/04/05/make-
| your-o...>
|
| There's now quite a sourdough ... culture ... substantially
| invigorated after the Covid-19 pandemic (xkcd:2296), with
| books, podcasts, websites, vloggers, etc. I picked up much of
| my own baking knowledge through these (starting with a few YT
| videos, and progressing through my own experimentation and
| further research). I'm still going and just had a couple of
| slices of my latest batch with eggs.
|
| Starters are startlingly resilient, though you can kill them
| off or spoil them, largely through heat or prolonged regret.
|
| As any good sysadmin knows, good backups are essential. I'd
| restarted my batch from a pinch of dough that was proofing in
| the fridge after one inglorious encounter with a microwave and
| housemate. After that I dried and froze a batch (King Arthur
| covers this as well: <>), and a tablespoon of the frozen
| starter plus about a half-dozen feedings has it going strong
| again. (This differs from KA's recovery method, but worked.)
|
| Drying another batch to freeze as we speak, can never be too
| sure ;-)
|
| Using someone else's starter can help bootstrap the process,
| but your own environment's selective pressures and new sources
| of yeast, most of whice come from whole-meal flour, which is
| what you should use to start your own batch. Note that
| _bleached_ white flour, whilst it can be used to bake or feed
| however much I 'd advise against it, typically lacks any active
| yeast. I did do some baking with unbleached flour when that was
| all that could be obtained, and the results while poorer than
| with unbleached / whole-meal were still quite acceptable, just
| not my preference.
| jzb wrote:
| We got some during the pandemic. My wife went through the "make
| your own bread" phase with great enthusiasm. (And results!)
| We'd tend to Carl, our container of starter, and talk about how
| well it was doing. Then it trailed off and it's gone to stater
| heaven. Pity.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I also started baking during COVID and now I'm obsessed. I
| wish it paid as well as software, I would do it full-time.
| deaddodo wrote:
| The only shipped starter that will ever make a difference is
| San Francisco starter and that's because there is a literal
| mutant bacteria in the culture that causes much higher lactic
| activity than normal. And it'll only make a difference if you
| use it straight.
|
| All other shipped starters are just a shortcut to going to a
| local baker and asking for a donation (I've done this dozens of
| times, all over the world; when I've wanted a fresh/homemade
| loaf), or just spending a week's time and ~350g of wasted flour
| developing your own.
| yumraj wrote:
| Who ships from SF?
|
| Is there a bakery that sells? Boudin doesn't as far as I
| know.
| nanolith wrote:
| I recently introduced my wife to the process of creating a
| sourdough starter. We created our own over two weeks. I used the
| yeast and bacteria in the starter to jump start a crock of
| peppers that I'm fermenting to make hot sauce.
| sharphall wrote:
| https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/01/carl-griffith-oregon-t...
|
| Apparently it has blown up on TikTok and they are overwhelmed
| with requests.
| zoky wrote:
| I tried this once and ended up dying of dysentery...
| jb1991 wrote:
| Lucky. I caught smallpox from mine.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Are those scars on your face from learning how to use
| silverware?
|
| Back in the early 80's when Walmart was a new thing in towns
| across the country, I found a t-shirt with that question
| printed on it.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > History Of The Starter? In the mid 1800's the Oregon Trail was
| the main route west for settlers, farmers, lumbermen and
| prospectors. The Trail started in the state of Missouri in about
| the center of the continental US and meandered WNW for about 2000
| miles to the Oregon Territory. Other trails branched off of the
| main trail, SW to Santa Fe and west to California and elsewhere.
| The Starter came West in 1847 with one of Carl's ancestors who
| traveled the Oregon Trail to Oregon by wagon train.
| kylegalbraith wrote:
| It's always a lot of fun to see stuff like this on HN. It's a
| reminder that there are still a lot of fun and amusing things on
| the internet.
|
| I also love seeing stupid simple HTML sites like this. It's
| hideous to look at but it serves exactly the purpose it's there
| to do. It's also really fast.
| codazoda wrote:
| I make a little framework for "stupid simple HTML sites" and
| use it as a "starter" for most of my own work.
|
| https://neat.joeldare.com
| m0d0nne11 wrote:
| Bah! when I requested _my_ sample way back in `96 we only had
| USENET, and we LIKED it!
| sneak wrote:
| It's also easy to make stupid simple HTML sites that aren't
| hideous to look at (CSS doesn't make it slow) that are fit for
| purpose and are really, really fast. My website is one such
| example.
|
| Putting JS in the render path is a mistake.
| ggm wrote:
| "It depends"
|
| https://www.agriculture.gov.au/biosecurity-trade/policy/legi...
|
| (Australia)
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > NOTE: Jan 2024: We have been slammed with thousands of requests
| (20 times the usual amount) so please be patient in the time it
| will take to receive your starter.
| m0d0nne11 wrote:
| Wow! I sent off for a sample back in 1996 but IIRC I managed to
| kill it before baking a decent loaf - maybe I'll try again.
|
| (Being a packrat I still have the original emails...)
| m0d0nne11 wrote:
| Anybody here ever attempted to develop a Desem culture as
| described in the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book?
| davidw wrote:
| Burns, Oregon (Carl's home town) and Harney County do not appear
| on Hacker News very often, but what an amazing place it is.
|
| Recently, it's probably best known for the Bundy family and
| company taking over the wildlife refuge south of Burns.
|
| But it's well worth a visit for some of the natural attractions,
| the most prominent of which is Steens Mountain and the Alvord
| Desert just below it to the east.
|
| Much of it is incredibly remote - the county is more than 10,000
| square miles ( 26,490 km2 - more than half the size of the
| Netherlands and twice the size of Connecticut ) and has fewer
| than 8000 people.
|
| https://harneycounty.com/
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(page generated 2024-02-10 23:02 UTC)