Author: Jeremy Cherfas

We recently read Sweeping the Sleaze, by Oliver Reichenstein, ¹ and agreed with much of what he said. So we got rid of the various sharing buttons on this blog, which weren’t actually being used all that much. But then, how to bring the conversations on various social sites together? Reichenstein answers the same rhetorical question thusly:

Is there a better way to “integrate Social Media”? Well, why don’t you just post the best reactions on the bottom of the article? Like this:

So we might try that. Over on Facebook, for example, Dirk Enneking, who thinks sourdough is superior to yeast ² had this to say in response to my comment that a sourdough without yeast would be a very sorry affair.

@ Jeremy, it depends on who you subscribe to, some sourdoughs include yeasts, others are more purist: lB=Lactobacillus Lb. sanfransiscensis, Lb. farciminis, Lb. fermentum, Lb. brevis, Lb. plantarum, Lb. amylovorus, Lb. reuteri, Lb. pontis, Lb. panis, Lb. alimentarius, W. ciboria (F. Leroy, L. De Vuyst / Trends in Food Science & Technology 15 (2004) 67–78_

To which I responded:

@Dirk Enneking I wonder; the article you cite is a specifically industrial view of a culture for fermentation that is designed with uniformity and other “important functionality” in mind. I would be willing to bet that any starter culture (and sourdough is often a misnomer as the resulting bread can be not in the least sour) used by artisanal bakers and home bakers would contains yeasts as well as lactobacilli and other bacteria. But then, you probably know that: http://sourdough.com/forum/fake-sourdough

That last link is a dig at the fact that Dirk is in Australia, home of major fake sourdoughness.

The big question, of course, is whether we should continue to follow Reichenstein’s advice and copy conversations here. What do you reckon?