Frequently asked questions, definitions and explanations to include:
- What is the procedure after the online registration? Or: I have correctly filled out the available questionnaire online. When will I get my sampling kit to ship my sourdough to you for analysis?
Please note that filling out the online questionnaire does not guarantee involvement in the second stage of sourdough collection. Only a limited number of participants are selected for the second stage. You will be notified by e-mail when the sampling kit is ready for collection/shipment. Once you get the kit, you are invited to perform some home experiments with your sourdough, register the results in a second online survey and ship the sample together with your signed consent form (important!) to the lab.
- When do I get my analysis results?
Please be patient, good science, like good bread, takes a little time. We measure acidity levels and cultivate microbes (both bacteria and yeasts) immediately after the arrival or your sourdough(s) in the lab. To determine the exact microbial composition and measure metabolites, such as the abundance of acids, carbohydrates, proteins and fatty acids, your sourdoughs will subsequently undergo very time and resource intensive analysis procedures. We will keep you posted on the progress, but please do not expect to receive the final analysis results within the next few days or weeks.
- I do not have a sourdough, but still would like to contribute to fermented food research. Can I send in other fermented food or beverage samples? Or: I do also ferment other foods and beverages. Can I send additional foods or beverages together with my sourdough for analysis?
Yes, we collect also other fermented foods and beverages! We encourage you to get in touch with ETH Zurich Switzerland via communityscience@healthferm.eu . Please state which kinds of foods or beverages you do ferment and they will be happy to provide you more details 🙂.
- When should I best ship my sourdough/other fermented food sample? At the beginning or ending of the week?
We are happy to receive your sample anytime 🙂. However, the fresher the sample, the more accurate are the analysis results. Therefore, try to ship it rather at the beginning of the week, so that your sample won’t lay around somewhere in the warm or cold (nobody can know) over the weekend before reaching us in the lab.
- Why is the pH of my sourdough higher than 4? From a sensory perspective it is very sour?
Sourdoughs can have very variable acidity levels, depending on flour type and additional ingredients, fermentation time and temperature, and most importantly the potential of the microbes in your sourdough to produce a diverse range of different acids. In addition, not all acids lead to the same drop in pH (lower pH is more acidic, higher pH more basic). For example, a high abundance of lactic acid leads to a lower pH than a high abundance of acetic acid, even though based on a sensory analysis you may think that both examples lead to the same ‘sourness’ of your sourdough.
- Will the industry commercialize my sourdough?
No! None of your sourdoughs will go anywhere else than to our labs for analysis and research. The analysis results will be open accessible and trackable for you via your unique identifier(s). For everyone else, including the industry, the results are anonymized.
- Can I send in several sourdoughs?
Absolutely! Please either fill in the registration form individually for each one of your sourdoughs. Or, indicate the number of your sourdoughs such that we can ship you more than one sampling container. In the latter case, you would also get several unique identifiers, one for each of your sourdoughs. We ask you then to register sourdough maintenance details and home experiment results for each one of your sourdoughs and collect these responses via the unique identifiers to be able to link it to our analysis results in the lab.
- Do I have to fill in the registration form several times if I have several sourdoughs?
Please refer to the previous answer.