From: dadams@cherry10.cray.com (David Adams)
Subject: Culture Nomenclature  (was: Wondering about milk...)
Originator: dadams@cherry10
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 13 Aug 92 11:38:12 CDT


 cmurray@esk.compserv.utas.edu.au (Christopher John Murray) writes:

> 
>      What I want to know is :  The Starter I used contained flour, milk
> sugar and nothing else.  I left it for four days near a wood heater and 
> when I opened the jar it smelt *perfect*.  But is this really SF sourdough?
> I live in Australia and I'm sure books can get away with anything here..
> 

It will be Australian sourdough.  ;^)  


It is sort of silly to ask if it will be real SF sourdough as there are
many different cultures that claim to be real SF sourdough and none of
them are the same.  (Goldrush, Wood's SF, 4 cultures in the Famous SF
study, and numerous others, none of which are the same.)

I am stepping on many peoples sacred cows here, but there seem to be
more myths about San Francisco sourdough than anything else.

But hey, if Hardees can call their hamburger buns San Francisco sourdough
bread, when they aren't even sourdough at all, then you ought to be able to
call your culture SF sourdough if you want.  At least you are 1/2 right!

This reminds me of a biology teacher who when asked what the difference
between a toadstool and a mushroom was responded, "It's a toadstool
if a toad is sitting on it!"  Well it's San Francisco Sourdough if 
is is made in San Franciso.  Aparently it doesn't matter what the 
culture is.


We went through a discussion some time ago on the mailing list about
how cultures get their names.  It would be really nice if each of 
us were able to identify the strain we had and refer to our culture
that way, but this is not possible for most of us, so we tend to 
name our culture acording to where it came from or something like
that.  This really doesn't mean a whole lot since the culture could
easily have come to Grece from Egypt or Turky etc.  

And then even if we were able to identify our culture by the strains
of yeast and lactobacilli involved, strains will often vary.  As larry
Hite said once in the mailing list:

	The other point I did want to mention is that even 
	within strains there are variations.  You could get 
	two cultures from two different bakeries which both 
	contained the same strains of yeast and bacteria.  It 
	is possible that one of the bacterial strains in the 
	first culture produced twice as much acid as the same 
	bacterial strain in the second culture.  Small genetic 
	differences such as this are quite common.  In this 
	case the first culture might give a much more sour 
	bread than the second.

  
	(See archives for Jan 16 92, line 369 to 376 -- Larry's post was
	very informative--I suggest reading the whole thing if you
	are interested and have access to the archives.)

The implication is that even though we have several people working
with a culture with the same name, or even cultures that at one
time came from the same place, we cannot conclude that they are
the same.   


-- 
--David C. Adams  Statistician  Cray Research Inc.  dadams@cray.com
___________________________________________________________________
       member--Minnesotans for Global Warming.
Newsgroups: rec.food.sourdough