Stumbled on a bakery in Nashville that uses a 120-year-old starter

I was in Nashville last month for a weekend trip and stopped into this tiny bakery called Loveless Bakehouse. The owner told me their sourdough starter was passed down from her great-grandmother and has been alive since 1903. She said it gives the bread a tangier flavor than anything you can get from a store-bought starter, which got me thinking. I've been feeding my own starter for about 8 months now, but it still tastes pretty mellow. Has anyone else tried working with a really old starter, or noticed a big difference compared to a younger one?

2 comments

2 Comments

zarat377d ago

I've seen some bakers online who swear that a starter over 50 years old has way more depth than anything under a year. My neighbor has one from 1978 that he got from his mom, and the crumb on his loaves is way more complex than mine with my 10-month-old starter. It might be that the older one has had more time for different wild yeasts to settle in, so even if you feed them the same flour, the bacteria mix is totally different over decades.

casey2687d agoTop Commenter

Thing is, @zarat37, I wonder how much of that is just the placebo effect of knowing it's old. Like yeah, a starter from the 70s has a cool story, but microbiology wise, the yeast and bacteria turnover is pretty constant if you feed it right. I feel like a lot of what people call "depth" is just better technique from years of practice, not the starter's birthdate.