in article , Don Hellen at
wrote on 25/10/03 9:01 pm:

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:26:25 -0700, "Rod & BJ"
wrote:


I'm thinking of sending out for two of their packets (with a
donation for the trouble, of course!) and using one in my
liquid base of water, sugar, and potato buds, the very same
that I've used successively for 10+ years.

As a backup, I figured I could always make the starter up
the way the directions have it spelled out and use a
different type of starter base if the other fails to work
with this culture.

Any suggestions/comments?
Don Hellen

Obviously one could order any number of packets for any number of reasons
but logic would suggest one starter would more than suffice.....feed it
appropriately and you can fill your house with gallons of starter for all
sorts of experiments in short order.


Combining starters probably makes little rational sense since a viable
culture is generally understood to be dominant organisms from a weeding out
process of many.....combine the two "winners"and you simply start a new
war(competition for resources) and one or the other will dominate.... on the
other hand a cup or two of flour is pretty cheap so experiments are not
exactly cost prohibitive. Soggy

Again, I must not have been very clear in my post, or
assumed that my previous posts would have been sufficient to
provide some background on my situation. Looking back at the
post, I'm sorry that I didn't explain it better.

Anyway, I have no plans to combine starters. What I was
referring to was to try a sourdough starter (or two, but
separately) in a liquid base similar to what I've used for
over 10 years. If that didn't work, I'd do the flour-based
starter. Mine used potato buds, sugar, and water, and seemed
to keep the lactobacillus bacteria and yeast very happy. I
just didn't bake any sourdough for so long (and didn't feed
the culture, either) that it seems to have died.

Sorry for the confusion, but thanks for the help.

Don Hellen
It might be good to try just flour and water if that is the kind of bread
that y ou are making. That way you will know that the starter will produce
a rise in the bread you are working on. Ellen