Even if some of the yeast is from ancient strains, I wonder if it's really feasible to get a mix that's representative of what was in those containers 4,500 years ago. Shouldn't the population be changed by the selective pressure of being starved and dormant for that long (i.e. the ones that can be revived might be a small minority)? Or for yeast, is chilling for millennia no big deal?
The issue with old strains is similar to the whole concept of homeopathy. Sure, the original strain might be 4000 years old, but keeping a sourdough starter usable means keeping it exposed to air where it gathers fresh bacteria, eventually leading to the starter being statistically significant only to the bacteria of the locale, not the source of the starter.
Every locale has its own indigenous yeast variants. Unless you go to ridiculous lengths to isolate your starter from the environment (which some people do, including sterilizing the flour used to feed the starter), it's going to eventually be taken over by local yeast.
Beer and bread, and the yeasts used to make them, used to be indigenous to the region, and sometimes very localised. Every brewery and bakery had their own local yeast cultures. The rise of factory bakeries and breweries meant nearly all of those died off. IIRC industrial brewing depends on just 3 or 4 strains of yeast. Only the relatively recent resurgence of craft baking and brewing has kept some of the others around.
The local strains that led to so many wonderful tasting breads and beers have been lost.
I'd be as interested in learning how the local strains of yeast have changed over those intervening 4,500 years, as seeing he a good result trying to bake from what he retrieved.
Not directly related to your comment, but a book I read recently was tangentially related and really interesting "Never Home Alone" [1].
It is basically about all the life around us that we don't notice, from microbes to insects, etc.
He had a section where he talked about the yeast we use for wine production coming originally from wasps who land on the grapes.
And also a section where they had 20 or so bakers from different regions each use the same initial sour dough
starter and then agree to feed it for like 6 months or something and at the end they all got together and each baker made a loaf of bread using their sour dough culture. The purpose of the experiment was to see how the local environment affected what grew in the starters and how that would affect taste.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 47.5 ms ] thread[EDIT] which are fungi anyway, incidentally
Which, IMHO, is a fine thing! Bake where you are.
The local strains that led to so many wonderful tasting breads and beers have been lost.
I'd be as interested in learning how the local strains of yeast have changed over those intervening 4,500 years, as seeing he a good result trying to bake from what he retrieved.
Roomali Roti is also very good
It is basically about all the life around us that we don't notice, from microbes to insects, etc.
He had a section where he talked about the yeast we use for wine production coming originally from wasps who land on the grapes.
And also a section where they had 20 or so bakers from different regions each use the same initial sour dough starter and then agree to feed it for like 6 months or something and at the end they all got together and each baker made a loaf of bread using their sour dough culture. The purpose of the experiment was to see how the local environment affected what grew in the starters and how that would affect taste.
I thought it was a super interesting book.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088985-never-home-alon...