Sourdough Preservation — Programme for Bakers and Researchers
The museum launches a four-month programme for preserving authentic Poltava bread sourdoughs that have been passed down in peasant families for over a hundred years.
In January 2026 the Poltava Folk Gastronomy Museum began a four-month programme for preserving authentic Poltava bread sourdoughs. The programme focuses on a collection of eighteen active sourdoughs that the museum has collected over ten years of field expeditions. The oldest sourdough in the collection — of the Dyachenko family from Shyshaky — is documented continuously from 1898, passed mother-to-daughter over five generations. The sourdoughs are maintained in temperature-controlled conditions with weekly feeding of organic rye flour.
The programme is designed for twenty participants — professional bakers, microbiome researchers, culinary journalists. The curator — a food microbiologist from Poltava Agricultural University — teaches the theory of yeast and lactic-acid bacteria symbiosis, methods of long-term storage (drying, freezing, transition to starter), microscopic diagnosis of sourdough. A special block is genealogical documentation of sourdoughs: origin, transfers between families, regional features. Upon completion of the programme participants receive clones of the museum's official sourdoughs with full lineage.
