The Wild Sourdough Project
Yesterday a new Fermentology mini-seminar series premiered with the first talk being on Wild Sourdough. Many people watched the seminar live on YouTube at 4 pm EST/ 10 pm Danish time. However, if you were unable to watch it live you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/W_cwC71gfzk thanks to the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University.
The talk on Wild Sourdough was lead by Lauren Nichols and Erin McKenney from the Rob Dunn Lab at NC State University. Together with a team of collaborators they are leading a new sourdough science collaborative project called Wild Sourdough. The project is based on insights from a previous project called the Sourdough Project and questions that the Sourdough Project raised but was unable to answer.
Sourdough connects people
The team leaders of the new collaborative effort, Wild Sourdough, are motivated to embark on this project now because it is a way to do new science, but also to engage a community of people around bread, microbes, and the community associated with reconnecting, whether that be reconnecting with past traditions, reconnecting with each other, or reconnecting with the mysterious microbes on which sourdough bread depends. Lauren and Erin discussed their motivations, described recent sourdough science discoveries and explained the key steps necessary to make a sourdough starter as part of this project.
You can help the scientists
In these new times of Corona where the universities are closed we all spend more time at home and some people might even find more time to bake. If you want to help the scientists from Department of Applied Ecology you can grow your own sourdough and share some simple data with the scientists.
You can read more about the project and help the scientist by making your own sourdough here: http://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/
The Fermentology seminar-series is sponsored by the Department of Applied Ecology at NC State University, the NC State University Libraries and the Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics at University of Copenhagen and a new talk is live every Thursday at 4 pm EST/10 pm Danish time until late August 2020.