The Preschool Starter

My daughter has fantastic preschool teachers.   I mentioned that I was teaching a course on bread and that the kids might enjoy having their own bread starter to make pancakes.  It's very exciting that she agreed to do this project with the kids!  I even showed her my starter on the day it went on a field trip to Noisette.  We talked about how the starter just grows from the wild yeasts and bacteria in the air and had a good laugh about what might be in the air in a classroom at the beginning of spring when everyone is a little sick.  But I promised her it wouldn't mold because the combination of wild yeasts and bacteria would prevent any unwanted fungi or bacteria from growing.

Yesterday morning when we arrived, my daughter's teacher looked very worried.  She showed me the bowl.  Yes, a little crusty that's ok...oh but wait...do you see it?  Mold!

I sort of like molds which belong to the fungal phylum Zygomycota.  Zygomycetes are ubiquitous worldwide and tend to prefer nutrition the form of simple sugars readily available in the bread starter.  Zygomycetes can reproduce sexually or sexually and once a spore lands somewhere if the conditions are right it does not take long to get a whole colony.  In this case just 3 days during the fermentation.


While studying the genetic diversity of saprotrophic fungi on decomposing woody conifer roots for my graduate work, I spent a lot of time collecting, culturing, identifying, amplifying, and sequencing zygomycetes from Oregon forests.   While I think that Rhizopus (common bread molds) are particularly beautiful under the microscope, I'm not really a fan of them to eat in this context especially since we did not identify these particular fungi.

Stirring the mixture, the starter underneath looked bubbly and normal.  However, I suggested that she throw it out, start over, put the jar on the warm dishwasher in the kitchen and offered to bring the jar home over the weekend for its first feedings.  I also posed a question to on the New York Times discussion about bread and passed along the advice to mix up the starter several times a day.




Second try: they managed to keep the mold at bay!   We were responsible for bringing the starter home tonight and feeding it this weekend.

So now we have three starters at home.  That feels like a lot of responsibility.  This image I found on the #Bread101 hashtag my students are using totally sums it up.