Bob wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, how do you know that you have actually revived
> the old starter and not begun a new starter from the flour-water
> mixture?
>

The same way that people "catch" the organisms from the air or use
baker's yeast, grapes, potatoes, sugar and lasagna, sometimes with
drums, chanting or at certain moon phases when the birches sprout to get
a starter (I am not going to bring up the virgin stuff here, but it is
said to be still happening somewhere in France). It all works, that's
the magic.

> IOW, if a starter is really dead, how can it be rejuvinated by any
> means?

It can, you just read the right book or web site and it works.

And, besides - as long as the resulting starter does it's job, what's it
to you to know exactly what is growing and how - either old or new?

You just gotta loosen up about it and it falls in place. Once you can
revive a starter which has mushrooms or orange mold growing and take
pictures before and after, you are a hero.

There are reasons for this to happen the way it happens but you are
smart enough to search this out yourself and once you figured it out,
you can start resting cases en masse. Just remember to start new threads
every now and then to keep them shorter. It's a real pain to look for
something interesting based on the subject line and then it's endless
blah (I am not saying that this happened here recently, because I did
not read everything - just a general experience when looking for
something with a search engine).

Now, the yeast added when growing a new starter has several functions.
One important one is to show instant success. With a normal starter
birth, without yeast, it takes a bit longer and can be slow. With
baker's yeast, there is almost immediate action which is good for
impatient people which can't wait very long and it makes good party
talk.

Baker's yeast cannot take the vinegar produced from sourdough LB's and
dies away within three generations (or refresh's), that's been
researched. There are several ideas about it. One is that it is futile
to add yeast and some people don't like yeast anyway because they are
allergic. But it can compete initially for resources and prevent the
"real" sourdough organisms from establishing for a while.

The other idea is that the yeasts will die and their bodies are welcome
for the nutritionally demanding LB's to gorge themselves on and grow
fat. The fat LB's story I keep for later.

Maybe you get some ideas out of this.

Samartha





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