Why you add hydrochloric acid in hydrolysis of starch?

Starch is made up of a long chain of glucose molecules held together by glycosid ic bonds. As you might know already, glucose is basically a bunch of things stuc k to a six-member ring. One carbon in the ring is bound to an oxygen which is bo und to the carbon of another ring: this is the glycosidic bond. This C-O-C bond, an ether linkage, can be broken through hydrolysis to release the constituent g lucoses. Hydrochloric acid puts H+ in your solution. The lone pairs of the oxygen in the C-O-C bond will attack this H+. Now oxygen is bound to three things; it is unsta ble. Because acid allows this destabilization to occur, it lets hydrolysis of th e bond occur. This is not unique to hydrolysis of starch--other ether can also b e cleaved by mineral acids like HCl, HI, or HBr.