I've had my starter going for many years. What you saw was extremely unlikely to be Clostridium perfringens. The very article you linked says "salt-rising bre

I've had my starter going for many years. What you saw was extremely unlikely to be Clostridium perfringens. The very article you linked says "salt-rising bread starter requires a shorter incubation period of 6–16 hours and a higher incubation temperature, ranging from 38–45 °C". I've made salt-rising bread before a number of times, and I use my immersion circulator to maintain the temperatures that encourage its growth. I think salt rising bread is delicious, though my wife is a bit put off by the smell. And from the fact that she wrote up a bunch of necropsy reports on animals where one of the factors that led to their demise was Clostridium perfringens. But, as Howard McGee (author of the amazing On Food And Cooking) writes, there is a "lack of any known cases of the bread causing illness". His article on the topic is pure awesome. https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-kill-you-or-it-can-make-you-bread https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-ki...