Archaeologists believe we've been baking bread for 11,000 to 14,000 years. While the basic chemical reactions that leaven bread haven't changed much over the years, we're making the process of baking bread easier, faster, and more convenient through products like baking soda, baking powder, and instant dry yeast. We have developed countless shortcuts to do this. Also includes tools such as electric ovens, stand mixers, and food processors.
With the busy holiday baking season just around the corner and images of making sourdough stocking stuffers for friends and family dancing in my head, I recently acquired a new starter culture (California (Shout out to MatKat Bakery in Modesto). Normally, when maintaining your starter, you store it in the refrigerator or on the kitchen counter. The problem is that the yeast and bacteria that make sourdough prefer ambient temperatures in the mid-70s to low-80s, making my kitchen counter a little too cold and my refrigerator too cold. Make sure the starter rises properly when feeding. But you better believe there's a gadget to solve it. Here are three conditions to maintain the ideal temperature for your sourdough starter to thrive.
sour house goldie
That's exactly what Sourhouse Goldie is designed to do. Born from a highly funded Kickstarter, Goldie is essentially a small heating pad surrounded by a large glass dome, intended to create a small, cozy microenvironment for your starter to live in. .
An integrated thermometer tracks the temperature beneath the dome and communicates that information via the base's tri-color LED. Blue means it's too cold, red means it's too hot, and yellow means you've reached the “Goldilocks zone.” If it's too cold, you can turn on the heater to bring the temperature up to the Goldilocks zone and keep it there indefinitely. If your kitchen is too hot, you can lower the temperature by placing the included “cooling pack” in your freezer over the starter jar.
The dome is quite tall and can accommodate a regular quart-sized starter container, while the included pint-sized graduated cylinder is large enough to hold hundreds of grams of feed starter. Despite its height, the bell is solidly installed on the heating platform and tightly sealed at its base. If moisture gets trapped under the dome when feeding your starter, it can get quite stuffy under the dome. Overall, the device has a surprisingly small footprint, measuring less than 6 inches in diameter. It fits just about anywhere, you can pick it up and move it around the kitchen while you're at work, or tuck it into a corner or pantry shelf when you're not using it. It works with a USB plug (and the included wall adapter), adding a potential power option.
Not only does it provide a quick visual check to see how the starter is doing, but I also like that Goldie provides a bit of entertainment as the starter ramps up. I always feel a little proud when I see the culture I nurtured and cherished flourish and grow under the dome.
Overall, it's ridiculously easy to use. Just plug it in, turn it on, and place the starter under the dome. From there, it can be maintained indefinitely, provided it remains in power and continues to feed the culture. This method can be labor and resource intensive, since to keep the starter active at this temperature he needs to be fed every 12-24 hours. Think of it like a yeast-based teenager. Depending on your feeding ratio (starter, flour, and water added each time), you could end up using up your feed much faster than you expected. I like to store my starter in the fridge if I don't plan on using it for a few days (as it slows down the culture's metabolism a lot), but keeping the starter in the fridge brings the starter back into action much faster. I found out that it is possible. Not on my kitchen counter but in Goldie.
However, I'm not that attracted to Goldie's price. I like it, but $130 for the hot plate and bell jar is a bit pricey, especially when you don't have direct control over it, and in some cases, the marketing doesn't even include the starter jar you see in the photo. , it feels expensive to me. Understand what your starter is currently experiencing. For an activity that requires calculating hydration percentages to two decimal places, it's a very stressful experience.
Broad & Taylor Sourdough Home
The Sourdough Home from baking equipment supplier Brod & Taylor takes an almost opposite approach to heating, cooling, and maintaining your starter.If Goldie is kitchenware, then home is the kitchen Device.
This is a mini-fridge that sits on the countertop where you store jars of sourdough starter and can be adjusted with a dial to suit your preferred temperature. It is larger and boxier than Goldie. Higher, wider and deeper. The interior is divided horizontally by removable shelves and can hold 1 quart bottles or 2 pints. The front features an LED touch-sensitive thermostat that operates from 41 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. It's actually a small refrigerator that warms up on command, or a small oven that gets very cold depending on how you look at it.
With the Goldie, I found myself splitting my starter's time between spending time in the regular fridge and getting it ready for use inside the device itself. And this usually works if you only bake bread on weekends or if you need to activate the starter for a project on your mind. The Home replaces that entire situation with a single countertop device. The starter lives there. I don't lose them in the back of my full-sized refrigerator. I leave it hanging on the counter and never forget to feed it for a week.
Preparing your starter is as easy as adjusting your thermostat up a few degrees. Preparing for hibernation is the same, but in the opposite direction. The home has a fan built into its design, so it's slightly louder than Goldie, which is dead silent, but to me, as a middle-aged man with moderate tinnitus, the whistling sound is I can barely hear it. I like home. At $99, which is $30 less, it offers a degree of control and precision that the Goldie can't match.
breadwinner of the family
Goldie and Home both do a great job of keeping your starter at the perfect temperature, but neither will alert you when your culture is ready to use. This is where the Breadwinner comes into play. This Wi-Fi connected grow sensor attaches to the top of a wide-mouth (86 mm) mason jar with a screw. Measure the rate of rise of the starter from feeding until it reaches its peak several hours later, indicating it is ready for use.
Traditionally, I use a rubber band around the eye and the jar to measure hourly top growth to know when the starter slows to rise (meaning it's ready to use) Understand. Breadwinner not only does that for me, but also sends me an email alert when it's ready. All that data is also stored in an online portal where it can be tracked in real-time and mined for historical trends regarding the culture's previous performance. You can also join social networks and online journals of like-minded bakers, share recipes using your starter, and record everything you do with your starter.
This is a very useful gadget when you're getting ready to bake bread and can't necessarily hang around the kitchen until it's ready. You can complete other household chores and errands, and you can rest assured that your breadwinner will take notes when it's time to bake bread. I also like that this device adjusts to jar size (16, 24, 32, or 64 ounces) for more accurate measurements. The Breadwinner runs on 4 AA batteries and can last anywhere from two weeks to several months, depending on how often you feed your starter and how often you use the device. If you want to be more indulgent, you can pair Breadwinner with Home or Goldie, allowing you to quickly reheat your starter and know exactly when it's ready to use.
I wish the activation button wasn't so easy to activate. I accidentally turned the bottle while moving it between feedings and had to log into the portal and remove the empty record from my starter's profile. It also won't be sold at the MSRP of $85. That's a lot of money for a kitchen tool that has limited coverage and is completely optional. There are also concerns, given that the company behind Breadwinner is still a small startup. If they go out of business, the servers where Breadwinner's data and utilities reside will also go offline, leaving you with a $100 novelty jar lid. If Brod & Taylor or Sourhouse go out of business, warranty repairs will no longer be available, but the device itself will still work.
Who finds these gadgets most useful?
That's a total of $355 worth of gear. New, unrefurbished, KitchenAid 4.5 Quart Stand Mixer equivalent gear. That's a lot of flour. Still, the prospect of having your starter ready to use “within a few hours” rather than “late tonight” and not being able to blame yourself for forgetting to take the jar out of the fridge the night before is worth at least $100. be. myself. It's probably $225, but I've been burned like a starter in a hot oven by my own kitchen platform before.
In fact, the choice of keeper depends on your personal preferences. It falls between the more whimsical vibe of Goldie and the calculating precision of Sourdough Home. If you only plan on using your starter for baking once or twice a week, my best bet is to split the time between the fridge and Goldie. On the other hand, if you work on your starter for more than half the week and need to keep it ready at all times, a dedicated housing space like a sourdough home may be a better fit. Breadwinner works equally well with a warmer or on its own. If you tend to juggle other chores and responsibilities during recipe proofing time, using a breadwinner can help you keep going and prevent flat baking.
This article contains affiliate links. If you click on such links and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.
