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Kenneth Kenneth is offline
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Default Sourdough migration

On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:19:41 -0800 (PST), Will
> wrote:

>My experience is that culture drifts with flour source and one's
>maintenance practice. If you store cold, if adjusts to critters that
>thrive in cold, etc...


Hi Will,

If we think of the issue in terms of emphasis of one or
another characteristic of the starter, I agree with what you
have written above, but...

I know that I have two starters that have lived side-by-side
in my refrigerator for about since about 1990.

They are fed identically, but have remained distinct for all
these years.

I've thought about it this way:

Say you have a herd of water buffalo somewhere in Asia, but
you move 'em to Colorado and start to feed them cracked
corn.

After several years of breeding would we expect them to have
become a flock of chickens?

Admittedly, the sourdough critters don't have horns, but
they do have DNA, and that would seem to me to be the
primary determinant of their characteristics, providing, of
course, that modifications of the environment are not so
extreme as to kill off the "breeding stock" of one or more
of the "subspecies."

All the best,
--
Kenneth

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