“A hundred-year-old starter makes better bread”

The story is lovely. The microbes don't know about it.

Why

A starter is whatever population is thriving in it right now, and that is shaped by what you feed it, how often, and how warm your kitchen is. Move an old starter into a new home and within a few weeks of new flour and a new routine it behaves like a starter of that home. A young starter kept the same way ends up in much the same place.

Further down

Studies comparing hundreds of starters found that age told you very little about what lived in them; flour and upkeep told you more. None of which makes an inherited starter less worth keeping. The family tree in this app records where a jar came from, which is the part that's really old.

Words used here Starter

Updated 7 October 2026