Last year, plenty of people took up the new hobby of baking sourdough. What better to do when you can’t leave the house? And, since sourdoughs are based on cultivating a microbial community of yeast and bacteria in what’s called a “starter,” these bakers had to learn how to care for the billions of microbes with which they now shared a kitchen.

But as with many other hobbies, some of those new sourdough bakers probably gave up at some point. So what happened to their new microbe friends? What happens to a neglected sourdough starter?

On this episode of the Scienceline podcast, we find out.

Photo: A healthy sourdough starter can smell floral, yeasty or even like alcohol sometimes — but not rotten. [Credit: Jill Wellington | Pixabay]

Music by Jahzzar and Chopin, by Frank Levy and Jeannette Fang.

For more information about this episode, please visit: www.scienceline.org/2021/01/death-of-a-sourdough