Monitoring the Fermentation of Sourdough Starter with Computer Vision (opens in new tab)

I'm not as prolific as you are, but I bake fairly regularly, and its the perfect hobby for me. Nice and relaxed, with a tasty outcome.

While I haven't read it myself, on /r/breadit there's also a lot of love for 'Flour Water Salt Yeast' as well.

A day seems long? I’ve not noticed any appreciable difference past 3 hours.

Curious as to why you leave it this long...

I came here to say the same thing! Its a great read. Alsothe author runs a nice (infrequent) newsletter which occasionally features some interesting machine learning topics

There's a few MQ sensors[1] that would probably work well for something like this. Sensors like the MQ-3[2] are sensitive to alcohol, which could be used to help minimize hooching[3].

There's a great blog post[4] about using MQ sensors for "machine olfaction" to monitor things a human would normally smell with their nose. Definitely worth checking out!

[1]https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/MQGasSensors

[2]https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Sensors/MQ-3.pdf

[3]https://www.sourdoughhome.com/index.php?content=hooch

[4]http://www.maskau.dk/projects/electronic-nose

While you're right that good breads can be made with both types of yeast, there are definitely flavors you wouldn't be able to achieve with instant yeast because a live starter is often a much more complex mix of microorganisms while dry & instant yeast are more homogeneous.

from [1]

>Sourdoughs International is a family business dedicated to the resurgence of authentic sourdoughs. Authentic? Commercial yeast produces something that looks like sourdough but is completely bland and tasteless. Absolutely nothing tastes or smells anything like authentic sourdough. When you bake it with wild yeast and lactobacilli, it will taste and smell like sourdough should. There is no other way.

>The Industrial Revolution created fast rising yeasts that almost eliminated sourdough and did eliminate the lactic acid bacteria. As a result breads baked with commercial yeast have never equaled the flavor, texture and aroma of man’s first leavened bread. And never will!

That could explain the difference in taste.

[1]http://www.sourdo.com/

Another poster in this thread was reminded of this book, about 3 hours earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17397791

Ok Tait the Destroyer. It's not literally meant to be read as a single person living for hundreds of years on a bread diet.

I think it is absolutely fair to say that many, many people in the age of agriculture would not have survived if not for bread providing the bulk of their caloric needs. It seems unlikely that a pre-industrial agricultural society could even exist without bread or something like it. That's what it means for a food to be a "staple"; it is the crucial backbone of the person's or culture's diet.

Obviously the world is unaware of anyone who has survived for centuries off of any food source. I think they meant to say, if you insist on being so very specific, "For centuries, within a typical human lifespan, individuals have survived by eating this diet."

The sentence you quoted was very precisely worded:

https://i.imgur.com/4n59IWT.jpg