Bob wrote:
....
If Wood does sterilize his flour samples and proceeds to start
cultures by catching organisms from the air, then he has validated
that as a viable method. IOW, the sterilization works both ways,
namely, it ensures that flour-based organisms are not responsible for
starting the culture, and, given that the culture does start when
exposed to the atmosphere, it demonstrates that it must be airborne
organism that are responsible.
Does your book show what was necessary to reliably sterilize flour?
The older version of the book I have shows: = 500,000 rads for 12 hours
to reliably sterilize flour. When doing sterilizations with 150,000 rads
it would not sterilize the flour.
I have never questioned that one cannot "catch" organisms from the air.
To be sure they are from the air, one needs to use sterile media or it's
by chance with a tendency towards the higher germ counts and better
competing organisms. "Just" reliably sterilize your flour then you can
make your claim that you "caught from the air".
And - once you figured out the answers I posted recently, the one's
which were either thrown back at me: "do it yourself" or "who cares".
Btw, I don't know all the answers and what I figured out in this
context, I have posted repeatedly.
Once you find the answers, you can make a more educated guess what the
chances are that you actually catch something from the air. If you don't
have the answers, you are operating in the religious realm (see below)
with all what goes with it.
One thing that strikes me as rather odd about this whole controversy
is that yeast biologists and sourdough bakers alike claim that natural
starters are particular to a region of the world. We have SF starter
with organisms that seem to be present only in the SF region.
That's incorrect. LB SF bacteria have been isolated from sourdoughs in
USA, Italy and Germany (possibly other's as well). If you need to see
the references, I can dig those out.
I don't see a controversy, just a lot of misinformation and
religiousness = believing as opposed to "knowing" = looking at facts and
using some common sense.
We have
Russian starters with organisms that seem to be present only in Russia
and Eastern Europe. And so on.
Where are these organisms if not in the environment? If these
organisms come solely from the flour, then how can flour grown in
North Dakota be responsible for SF starter organisms? Does not
compute.
There is a finite number of LB organisms able to exist in sourdough
(with new one's still being discovered), some occurring in outside
environments (as I described one in a recent post) or are only found in
sourdoughs (LB SF is one of them).
And - flour is from the "environment" - fertilized and all.
SF organisms are said to develop after a while - that being continuous
refreshments for 3 weeks.
That's because they are better in metabolizing in this particular
environment whereas the "wood and meadow" LB's are more efficient in the
"wood and meadow" environment.
I hope that starter organisms are present in the flour because then
all I would have to do is obtain a sack of that particular flour and I
would be able to make all the starter I wanted easily - just like
Samartha and some others are claiming.
You have or had your organisms growing in your flour as I conclude from
one of your posts where you saw tiny bubbles ( or something to this
extent ).
Your posting style, in particular the phrases you used and the
assumptions you made and posted about my web site and motives have made
it impossible for me to respond in this manner I am able to do right now
thanks to Kenneth's input.
I could have SF starter just by
obtaining the particular flour in which the SF organism occurs
naturally. Presumably such magic flour could be obtained on a local
grocery store shelf, saving me the hassle of ordering starter cultures
at outrageously high prices only to find they are possibly dead on
arrival.
SF organisms don't occur "naturally" - well, at least so far they have
not been isolated from anywhere else but sourdough. So, if you want to
"catch" the LB SF from a flour bag, it would be a discovery if you are
able to proof the existence or most likely a flop. LB SF's are
specialized in sourdough environments, not in flour and nature.
And - all this speculation about the where's why's and perhaps - once
you have a working starter and you like the bread, who cares?
For a home baker to really proof and know what organisms are doing the
good stuff is very much impossible.
A while ago, there was a fellow posting on this forum who had a
microbiology research friend and said he was going to get cultures
analyzed - he never showed up to report progress or results.
Samartha
PS.: you are still going on with this cult shit while I type this post.
I really think I am wasting my time here. Since I have this already
typed, I send it off. Maybe you can take a step back and have a look how
all this started, in particular if Dick's response with the chewing gum
was worth feeling to get "attacked" and start this nego charade.
Honestly, what kind of a guy are you having to do this?
--
remove -nospam from my email address, if there is one
SD page is the
http://samartha.net/SD/