(5/11- 5/12/16)
On Day 12/13, I repeated the “feeding” process of taking out a teaspoon of the dough from previous nights and adding fresh flour mix. Then, these were mixed together in warm water with clean bare hands. Again, the purpose was to inoculate the microbes from the hands to the dough, but at the same time, you don’t want too much concentration of microbes. The smell of the microbe was very similar to the smell from Day 10, which made me believe that maybe because I am using a restrictive amount of nutrients and depositing certain concentration of microbes, the population of the microbes in the dough had stagnated; therefore, the smell isn’t getting any more intensive. It is still very sour and very aromatic! 🙂
So, because today post is just basically an everyday repetition of what we had been doing, I would love to talk about the SCIENCE behind the whole project in a more detailed manner. As I had mentioned before in my previous blogs, when microbes take in carbohydrates, they convert these compounds into energy. The by-product of this process can either be CO2 and alcohol (ethanol), or some acid (lactic acid). Depending on the conditions or the nature of the microbe, it can choose either one of the metabolic pathways.
Because we are dealing with microbes off of our skin, I am assuming the major fermentative microbe in the dough is the streptococcus species that can also be found in our mouth. Another great microbe would be the propionibacterium that is a normal flora on our skin.
That’s all I have for today~ See you two days from now!
Reference:
http://academic.pgcc.edu/~kroberts/Lecture/Chapter%205/fermentation.html
