
Baking bread from a 4,500-year-old yeast from Ancient Egyptian pottery - seapunk
https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1158264819503419392
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abeppu
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?

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MidnightRamen
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.

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sgt101
I'm confused - yeasts are not bacteria?

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rleigh
No, they are a unicellular fungus, which is a completely separate evolutionary
branch (eukaryota).

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Osiris30
The author Seamus Blackley is also a co-founder if the XBox amongst other cool
things
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Blackley](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Blackley)

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coldcode
Would be fun to taste the bread, especially if they can validate it is ancient
yeasts. I know people have brewed beer using ancient yeasts.

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war1025
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.

I thought it was a super interesting book.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088985-never-home-
alon...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088985-never-home-alone)

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jsilence
I misread that with 'breaking bad' and it turned into a really interesting
plot with exotic biopsychodrugs in my head.

