Hi folks! I have a couple of starters a local one (I'm in the S.F. Bay Area) and the Italian culture from sourdo.com, I use them regularly and usually have one or both active at any given time. I also use IDY quite a bit in my kitchen as well as we have tons of wild yeast, enough in fact that it was super easy for me to develop my wild sourdough culture in a short period of time. My concern is that my Italian culture will get contaminated by all of the other yeasts present in my kitchen, and I really like that culture.
My protocol is this, I keep my mother culture in my fridge and when I want to build a poolish I pull out the cold culture feed it and place it in my proofing box, when it's really kicking I divide it and place the mother in a clean jar and place it in the fridge, then take the rest of the culture and build it up to the volume that I need. What are the chances that my culture will become contaminated with the IDY that is everywhere in my kitchen? Are there any steps I can take to avoid contamination, or is my protocol enough to insure that my culture will remain uncontaminated?
