Hi Kenneth,

Yes I seem to remember using almost the same analogy a while back, but
I think mine was sheep and cattle, anyway, I think the point is, the
buffalo aren't going to change but if you have a competition for food
and a resident population of chickens, if the chickens are more
efficient at eating up the food then you'd have more chickens than
buffalo, eventually having no buffalo. But what if the buffalo are
more efficient than the local population of chickens?

The truth in all this is we just don't know on either side of the
argument but I think common sense and what research we have seen is
that the flour is what is important not where you live. All that
smacks of Mal-aria or miasma of the 19th Century. I always site fungal
spore spread across vast areas and how the Amazon is fertilized by the
Sahara, so if sand can be transported vast distances then little yeast
and bacteria floating in the air certainly can be, so any idea of
local from an air standpoint is ludicrous.

I used to assert that my starters all run true but now I've realised
that what I've done with the bake has so much more of an effect on the
flavour that it's almost impossible to tell without good side by side
tests, I'm not suggesting for a second that I don't believe your
starters hold true, Ed Wood's starters all were or seemed different to
me too, all grown on the same flour and in the same area. He certainly
gets no complaints about that at least.

Jim

On 21 Feb, 16:22, Kenneth > wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:19:41 -0800 (PST), Will
>...
> Hi Will,
....
> 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?
> ....
> All the best, *
> --
> Kenneth
>