personal and very much private yeast cultures, that each had become unique strains, explaining why you or I have no hope of producing bread this good in our own kitchens. As with many “facts,” once you do the science, you find out it ain’t necessarily so. What is known is that sourdough
bread baking is ancient and has sustained humans around the world for thousands of years. It is made from a sourdough “starter culture” which is maintained, even shared among bread bakers around the world. Te starter culture isn’t simply a culture of yeast; it contains a community of microbes made up of yeasts, as well as bacteria, that ferment the carbohydrates in flour and produce the carbon dioxide gas that makes the bread dough rise before baking. Te different acids and enzymes produced by the microbial culture affect the bread’s flavor, texture, and shelf life. Most bread lovers (and I’m definitely one) prize sourdough bread … but what about the myth of terroir? To answer this question we turn to
Ben Wolfe of Tufts University. Readers of FUNGI will recall that Wolfe has made many landmark discoveries involving fungi over the past few years, from which molds make the best cheeses, to determining how ECM Amanita mushroom species come from saprobic ancestry. A team led by Wolfe conducted the first ever comprehensive survey of sourdough starter microbial communities and published their findings in a recent edition of the journal eLife (/
doi.org/10.7554/eLife.61644). Tey looked at 500 starter cultures from the homes of bread bakers in North America, Europe, and Australasia. Bread makers often think their bread’s unique qualities are due to the local environment of where the sourdough starter was made (ah, San Francisco!). However, the researchers found that geographical location had nothing to do with the diversity of the starter cultures studied. By and large, everyone’s starter cultures had the same yeast strains. How could this be? Well, the researchers suspect the reason is that no matter where you live, all the grain to make your bread flour is homogenized, at least continentally, if not globally. So even if you did have yeasts unique to your home, they would ultimately get mixed and diluted with all the common
40 FUNGI Volume 15:1 Winter 2022
yeasts in bread flour purchased at the grocer. Another interesting finding, however, revealed that a group of microbes called acetic acid bacteria, which had been overlooked in past research, were relatively common in starter cultures. Moreover, starters with a greater abundance of this group of bacteria produced bread with a strong vinegar aroma and caused dough to rise at a slower rate—and contribute very significantly to flavors as well. So what can we conclude from this? While it’s no myth that the bread created by artisans in San Francisco and other places around the world is superior to what I can produce in my home, it has little to do with the yeasts in those starter cultures. It mostly has to do with skill and technique.
Black is the new gold
I
t once seemed like a miracle but lately we at FUNGI report every few years on another successful attempt at growing European truffles in North America. To pull it off, it takes microbiological knowhow to be sure, but it also takes a lot of tenacity. In the rare cases of truffle farmers actually having success, it often takes 15–20 years, or more. Most recently, some lucky growers struck gold—black gold—finding their first truffles after just nine years of trying in Sonoma County, California. (It would be more correct to say Seth Angerer’s Lagotto Romagnolo truffle dog made the discovery.) How does a hopeful truffle grower make that first discovery? You inoculate and plant. And wait. And walk and walk. For the past four years, between the months of December and March, Angerer has walked through his family’s hazelnut orchard in Geyserville, California, hoping for a miracle. With his dogs Leo and Vito in tow, he walks the eight acres (encompassing 1,500 inoculated trees), slowly making his way up and down the rows of hazelnut trees. It can take up to three hours to cover the entire farm. But one day last November, something happened that had never happened before: they found a truffle! Tat five ounce Périgord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) found in Geyserville is thought to be a first in Alexander Valley. Sonoma County’s
first cultivated truffles were harvested in 2017 at the Jackson Family Wines vineyard nearby and the Angerers were part of that success too. Getting into truffle growing means
playing the long game—which is typically marked by frustration and disappointment. In the 1970s Henry Trione sparked truffle fever in Sonoma County when he staged the first California Truffle Congress in Santa Rosa with hopes that the oaks in Northern California could be hiding the same delicious fungi as their cousins in France and Italy. And while truffles were found, they weren’t choice, or even edible really, quashing early enthusiasm. Trione’s passion did, however, spark an ongoing interest in truffle growing here. Tat enthusiasm spawned the decade-long dream of growing truffles for the Angerers, who operate Angerer Family Farm and Alexander Valley Truffle Co. Tey’ve gone at it alone, investing in several hazelnut orchards that are inoculated with the Tuber melanosporum from Burgundy, France. Tey’re also experimenting with white Italian truffles. No success with those, yet. Stay tuned.
A new test for amatoxins, redux We recently featured the amazing
new highly sensitive test for amatoxins in FUNGI. Tis has generated much discussion and questions so who better to explain this brand new test but the creator!
How does the
AMATOXtest work? Candace Bever
T
he AMATOXtest works like many clinical diagnostic tests, the most
common being a pregnancy test (or more recently, a Covid rapid test). Tese diagnostic tests rely on antibody molecules that detect a specific target. In the case of the AMATOXtest, the target is a toxin known as amanitin (or amatoxins). Antibodies bind/detect/ recognize a specific target akin to how a lock fits a specific key. In this case, the lock is the antibody and the key is the target amanitin. Amanitin is the deadliest mushroom
toxin known to date. Amanitin is a toxin that is made by some mushroom
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