Death of a sourdough

Last year, plenty of people took up the new hobby of baking sourdough. What better to do when you can’t leave the house? And, since sourdoughs are based on cultivating a microbial community of yeast and bacteria in what’s called a “starter,” these bakers had to learn how to care for the billions of microbes with which they now shared a kitchen. But as with many other hobbies, some of those new sourdough bakers probably gave up at some point. So what happened to their new microbe friends? What happens to a neglected sourdough starter? On this episode of the Scienceline podcast, we find out. Photo: A healthy sourdough starter can smell floral, yeasty or even like alcohol sometimes — but not rotten. [Credit: Jill Wellington | Pixabay] Music by Jahzzar and Chopin, by Frank Levy and Jeannette Fang. For more information about this episode, please visit: www.scienceline.org/2021/01/death-of-a-sourdough