Starters:

[KyleW]

Hi Peter,

On another thread you said:

"Crust & Crumb," I think, does have the best sourdough information, and the sourdough starter formula, though more fussy than the one in "Bread Baker's Apprentice," is more reliable."

This made me think of the difficulties some people ( on the BakingCircle) were having with bad bacteria overtaking their new starters. Is it possible that the sugars, added in the C&C starter but not in the BBA starter, help combat the bad bacteria. Would this explain why Macy's pineapple juice remedy worked?

Thanks

[Peter Reinhart]

Hi Peter,

On another thread you said:

"Crust & Crumb," I think, does have the best sourdough information, and the sourdough starter formula, though more fussy than the one in "Bread Baker's Apprentice," is more reliable."

This made me think of the difficulties some people ( on the BakingCircle) were having with bad bacteria overtaking their new starters. Is it possible that the sugars, added in the C&C starter but not in the BBA starter, help combat the bad bacteria. Would this explain why Macy's pineapple juice remedy worked?

Thanks

←

Yes, I do think the raisin water, and perhaps also the diastatic barley malt, helped to protect the starter from invasion in the C&C method. For those who are wondering what the heck we're talking about, I refer you to the King Arthur baking Circle and great detective work by some of the more scientific members who isolated an invading bacteria, not the lactobacilus strain we wanted, that interfered with the yeast development and seemed to (but didn't really) kill the starter. Macy, one of the members, came up with the best remedy when she substituted pienapple juice for water during the first day mixing. Either the acidity or something esle in the p-juice kept the invader at bay until the good organisms could get established. This problem did not always come up, but a large percentage of readers encountered it. We dubbed Macy's techique The Pineapple Juice Solution (a great title for a book, I think). Log onto the ing Arthur site for the whole story (you'll have to fish it out of archives) Anyway, we rarely, if ever, had this problem with the starter method in Crust & Crumb. Thanks Kyle!