I can tell by the thick crust this is Maui culture and not yeast already in the flour. I haven't tasted it yet, it's still cooling down, but that will be double confirmation.
I used very little flour,to reactivate the yeast culture, just a trace. The culture had languished for years. The refrigerated sample seemed dead after days of enhanced heat treatment. The sludge changed in nature but failed to form foamy bubbles. Except when stirred, then bubbles appeared, and not regular stirring bubble either. The tiny bubbles were in there, just not detectable and insufficient to double the height too tiny to rise to the surface.
So I added the dry Maui culture to boost the reactivation. Now that must be replaced. I had a lot of trouble reactivating this culture using both samples after so much time had elapsed. Several years, in fact.
The culture was collected on Maui at three different times at three different places. My poor brother bore with me through all that, patiently bemused with my obsession and experimentation and the God-awful smell. Good grief, that place is yeasty. A solid collection fully foaming can be gathered overnight. Within a few hours on a windy day. One of the collections was only an hour. The three combined back at home.
These are the yeast cultures saved as thick putty in the refrigerator. Except for the tin, that one is frozen. You can see they're all visibly different. They all do produce different tasting bread with different characteristics in crust and crumb.
These are the cultures that were dried.
The best of the lot is Antioch. Collected by my brother by my request per my instructions. His heart was not in it the project. He did it for me and that is all. He said it was rained on twice. The rain spout dumped into the tray. His dog lapped it up. The squirrels got into it. Branches fell into it. Leaves blew into it. Insects climbed in. All that is good. It was partly dumped out accidentally, started over, refreshed with new water and flour a few times. Then finally mailed off to get rid of it. The package split open in shipping. Only a tablespoon remained on delivery. It was a mess. It turned out to be the most outstanding culture of my sourdough culture collection. The fastest. The strongest. The best tasting. The best crust. The most flexible. The most forgiving. And that goes to show you ... something.
Larger photos, less words here.
