My sourdough starter has twins

Summary

A couple of years ago, I participated in a study of the HealthFerm Citizen Science group in collaboration with the VUB Brussels and ETH Zurich universities. The study, called the Citizen Science Sourdough Project, aimed to collect and map micro-organism samples of sourdough starters with the help of citizens like you and me. As a sourdough bread nut, of course I was more than happy to send a sample. And then years passed and I completely forgot about the research project. Until yesterday, when I finally received an email with the results of my sample (id 4f6d6)! In the first part of the result report, your personal sourdough starter is compared to all the other submissions, by investigating (A) possible “twins”, charted on a map of Europe, (B) fermentation preferences such as temperature and time, (C) acidity and age, and (D) amount of yeast and bacteria cells: THe personalised result report, part 1. Since the report is in Dutch, I’ll try to summarize it here for each of the four parts. My starter is called Stinkie—which does not really need a translation. When I don’t bake during weekdays, I keep it in the fridge, and I usually feed it rye at a 100% hydratation level meaning equal amounts of flour and water. This means it can get quite tangy and if not well-maintained, well, stinky! Stinkie’s twins—it looks like in Switzerland three other starter samples exactly match mine! Two more twins live somewhere in Greece and Finland. This is significant for me because the uniqueness of your starter is defined by the local climate, local flour, and the way you feed it to keep it alive. The weather in Greece is much warmer than in Belgium and Mediterranean flour is more nutty and wheaty than the ones I have access to, while the reverse is true for that twin in Finland where rye is more predominant than wheat. Perhaps they all use the keep-cool-in-fridge technique? Of course I’m just guessing here: the person maintaining his starter in Finland could just as well rely on impor...