I'm kind of new at this whole thing, but I believe I haven't done as
much study as this since I was in college many years ago. In all of the
reading I have done, your logic seems to be what the "experts" agree
with. Regardless of where your starter comes from, it will over time
regenerate to your local micro organisms and will develop the "local"
flavor. It seems that the logic is that every time you feed your
starter and it is exposed to local air and environment, it will absorb
that local atmosphere which will overpower the foreign organisms. There
is a FAQ that is from this newsgroup put out by Darrell Greenwood that
addresses this:
> II. STABILITY OF SOURDOUGH STARTERS
>
> The stability of the sourdough starter symbiotic relationship
> determines the stability of the starter in whatever location the
> starter is being maintained. In other words, when you move a starter
> to a new area, it will become bombarded by new strains of wild yeast
> and lacto-bacillus that are native to the new area. If the new
> microorganisms are able to live within the symbiotic environment that
> the Russian sourdough starter provides, then the starter will change
> characteristics (flavor, usually) as the local microorganisms
> multiply in the starter. Any and all microorganisms found in your
> starter are open to changes in relative concentration if the local
> microorganisms are 1) different and 2) can survive in your starter.
> It is even possible that the original species present in your starter
> (yeast and the lactobacilli) may slowly die off, being replaced by
> the species in the local area. There is no guarantee that your
> starter will stay the same as the original, but there is also no
> guarantee it will change.

Note that it says it may or may not die off. Having read about the same
subject in other places, it seems that the common belief is that
eventually the original starter will be totally replaced by local
species. The full FAQ by Darrell is located
at:http://www.faqs.org/faqs/food/sourdough/starters/

Daddio

Fred wrote:

> It seems logical to me that if one were to import a starter from another
> area that the starter in time would change character as it absorbed local
> microorganisms. It makes me wonder about the value of using someone else's
> starter from another geographic area.
>
> My own starter - flour and water from scratch is now over 3 months old and
> is making very flavorful bread. In fact I now have to keep my fermentation
> time to under 12 hours or the bread is too sour. I used to ferment 24 hours
> but that doesn't work any more.
>
> I shared some bread with a local sourdough baker who uses a starter that
> started in San Francisco. Our breads tasted very comparable to one another.
> Mine was a little more sour because I had fermented a little longer but the
> taste was very similar. He took some of my starter because he liked the
> taste of my bread better than his. I can't help but think his starter has
> become just like my starter over a period of time. Is there a point in
> importing a starter?
>
>
>