Dubbed the Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter, this purpose-built jar helps you create the ideal sourdough starter without any mistakes or hiccups. It comes with its own measuring markings, a storage cup, a valved lid, and an analog ‘fermentation clock’ that offers a neater alternative to writing dates on your mason jar with a marker to track your fermentation process.

Whether this is your first time making a starter or you’re a master of sourdough, Kefirko just makes things easier. Sure you could brew a coffee with a glass of hot water and a cloth strainer, but using a French Press is infinitely easier and better, right? Well, the Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter works pretty much the same way. The sourdough-making jar comes made from inert glass (perfect for growing cultures), with built-in markings that let you easily measure out your ingredients. A separate cup lets you pour your flour and water into the jar, and doubles up as a lid when you’re done.

Designer: Marko Borko

Click Here to Buy Now: $26 $38 (31% off). Hurry, only 31/280 left!

The Kefirko Sourdough Fermenteralso comes with a measuring spoon, should you need one, and once you’ve mixed the ingredients inside your jar (water and flour), just pop the valved lid on your Sourdough Fermenter and leave it in a warm-ish place for the natural yeasts within the flour to get to work. The lid allows air flow so your yeast doesn’t suffocate, and any CO2 released during the fermentation process makes its way out the jar… and you can even shut the valves and make the Sourdough Fermenter airtight, so you can store your dormant yeast in the fridge for weeks or months, to be used only when you need it.

The Cup-lid safely covers the fermentation jar but is not airtight. It allows the airflow and helps boost the live cultures in your sourdough starter. You will have an active levain ready for baking in no time.

The rubber band additionally serves as a level marker, to easily follow the rise and catch the levain at its peak!

You can use the Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter with any sort of flour, whether it’s all-purpose, whole-wheat, or even rye. Each Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter comes with a rubber band that you can secure around the jar to mark your levain, so you can see how much it’s growing. You can portion out your sourdough using the tiny cup that comes with it, and each Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter also comes with two lids that can be used on the jar as well as the cup – effectively allowing you to create a new batch that you can either then culture separately, or store in the freezer to use later.

Your freezer ‘pauses’ the sourdough fermentation process, allowing you to hold onto a batch of starter for months without needing to constantly take care of it. Finally, a disc-shaped fermentation clock lets you mark the day and month you began the sourdough starter-making process, providing a cleaner alternative to writing a date on your mason jar with a marker. That way you’ll know how old your starter is – the older the starter, the more pronounced and nuanced its sour flavor!

Making and maintaining a starter isn’t an easy task – your starter is effectively a living creature, and it needs to be kept at the right temperature and fed daily for it to grow. Most people begin this journey rather enthusiastic, but give up midway just because of how much patience and experience it takes to do it right – the Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter just hopes to simplify and streamline the process, making it easy for anyone to culture their own batch of starter. Priced at a discounted €24 ($27), the Kefirko Sourdough Fermenter comes in 4 different colors and includes all the accessories you’ll need for culturing your starter. You can, however, grab baking equipment like a bread proofing basket, bench scraper, and bread lame (for scoring your dough) as addons for a few extra bucks.

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The post This handy jar lets you easily measure, make, and store your very own sourdough starter first appeared on Yanko Design.

Here’s something you probably didn’t know. Just like pretty much any living being on this planet, your sourdough starter has an active temperature range. Too warm or too cool, and your starter isn’t at its most active state, which in turn affects the quality and oven spring of your bread (the oven spring basically determines how loose your crumb is and how large the air pockets in your bread are). After all, your sourdough starter IS a living thing! Baking enthusiast Erik Fabian figured this out too, after a series of ‘average’ sourdough loaves caused by the fact that he lived in a relatively cool part of the world. A deep dive eventually led him to realize that it wasn’t his fault – it was the weather. Fabian figured out that the natural yeasts in his sourdough starter are the most active between 75°F and 82°F. Anywhere outside that range and it’s much harder to get that beautiful ‘oven spring’ you’re looking for in your loaf of bread. After all, even humans get sluggish in environments that are too hot or too cold, right?!

Designer: Sourhouse (Erik Fabian & Jennifer Yoko Olson)

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Wanting to elevate his baking prowess, Fabian decided to try out a few internet hacks to make his starter more active. He chucked his starter in the oven, tried warming it with a mug of hot water in the microwave, and even tried keeping it in warmer areas of his house, eventually realizing that none of them provided consistent results. Moreover, heating up an entire oven just to activate a tiny mason jar of starter seemed like an incredible waste of electricity. Fabian eventually decided to take matters into his own hands – partnering with his friend and industrial designer Jennifer Yoko Olson, they created Goldie – a tiny thermoregulated chamber designed to create the perfect environment for their starter to grow and thrive. Shaped like a bell jar with space to hold your container of sourdough starter inside, and an LED to tell you what the temperature inside your Goldie is, this tiny contraption proved to be a much more consistent (and energy efficient) way to culture a perfectly healthy starter.

The fable of Goldilocks tells the story of a young girl who sneaks into the house of a family of three bears, only to discover that the baby bear’s bed, chair, and porridge are ‘just right’. As a hat-tip to that children’s bedtime story, the Goldie too, tries to create conditions that are ‘just right’ for the sourdough starter. All you do is place your starter on the Goldie’s platform, enclose it with the bell jar, and switch the gizmo on. The platform under your sourdough begins circulating temperature-controlled warm air inside the bell jar, creating the ideal warm environment for the starter. An LED at the bottom glows either red or blue if your starter is too warm or cool, and if it’s in the sweet spot, the LED glows golden.

Goldie’s LED indicator gives you an idea of how your starter is feeling. An auto-warming switch on the device lets it automatically power on when the LED glows blue, and switch off when the LED turns red. If by some coincidence your house becomes unnaturally warm because it’s summer or the thermostat’s broken, each Goldie comes with a cooling puck that you can place inside the device, on top of your starter jar to help cool the environment down. When not in use, all you need to do is store the cooling puck in your refrigerator to be used another day.

Ultimately, Fabian and Jenny envisioned the Goldie to be a compact, energy-efficient product that could be kept on your countertop without really eating too much counter space. The sourdough starter incubator measures 130mm (5.1 inches) in diameter, and 216mm (or 8.5 inches) in height, and can comfortably fit almost any standard pint-sized jar inside. If you’ve got a slightly larger quart-sized mason jar, Goldie can fit that in too, although there won’t be enough headroom for that cooling puck.

For the best sourdough starter cultivating experience, Fabian and Jenny designed their own Sourhouse pint and quart-sized jars that are perfectly sized to fit into your Goldie. The incubation chamber runs on incredibly low energy, and powers via USB, allowing you to hook Goldie to a wall outlet, a power bank, or even your laptop! Goldie ships internationally for a discounted price of $115 along with puck, pint, and quart. The Sourhouse glass jars are available as add-ons, and if you want extra cooling pucks, there’s a 3-pack available separately too (so you can rotate between pucks as they simultaneously cool down in your freezer).

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Remember in 2020 when everyone got swept up by the dalgona coffee, banana bread, and sourdough starter trends? Like all trends, they gradually died down or were replaced by some other fashionable thing that the internet made viral… but if you’re still culturing your sourdough starter in 2022, it’s safe to say that you’re pretty serious about it! So is Erik Fabian, a passionate home baker who’s been making ‘average’ sourdough loaves for years now. Living in a relatively cooler climate, Fabian struggled with getting his sourdough starter to its healthiest state. A little research eventually led him to realize that it wasn’t his fault – it was the weather. You see, the natural yeasts in your sourdough starter are the most active between 75°F and 82°F. Anywhere outside that range and it’s much harder to get that beautiful ‘oven spring’ you’re looking for in your loaf of bread.

Click Here to Buy Now: $106 $139 (24% off). Hurry, for a limited time only!

Faced with the eternal dilemma of making mediocre sourdough loaves, Fabian resorted to internet tricks to create the perfect environment for his sourdough. He chucked his starter in the oven, tried warming it with a mug of hot water in the microwave, and even tried keeping it in warmer areas of his house, eventually realizing that none of them provided consistent results. Moreover, heating up an entire oven just to get the right sourdough starter seemed like overkill. To come up with a foolproof solution to this problem, Fabian turned to Jennifer Yoko Olson, industrial designer and fellow baking enthusiast. Together, they designed Goldie, an incubation chamber for your sourdough starter. Designed to hold virtually any container you’d normally culture your starter in, Goldie creates the perfect temperature and environment for your sourdough to grow, giving you an active yeast culture that results in the tastiest sourdough loaves.

Designed to almost look like a glass bell jar for your sourdough starter, Goldie is a nifty electric temperature-controlled chamber that incubates your sourdough to its fullest potential. Much more compact than your oven (and requiring just a fraction of its energy), Goldie elegantly warms your starter, bringing it up to the “Goldilocks Zone” of 75-82ºF – not too hot, not too cold.

The way Goldie works is pretty similar to beverage-heating smart mugs like the Ember. Goldie comes with a platform that creates a heated environment within the glass chamber. Simply place your mason jar (or use the Sourhouse Glass Starter Jar from the makers of Goldie) on the platform and cover it with the glass cloche and Goldie gets to work. Once switched on, Goldie gets to work, warming up the environment for your dough to bring it to its peak active state.

An LED indicator on the platform lets you know if the incubation chamber is too cool or too hot. An auto-warming switch on the Goldie allows it to automatically power on when your room is cool, and switch off if the environment gets too warm. What if your house is just unnaturally warm because the AC broke during the summers? Well, each Goldie comes with a cooling puck that you can store in your freezer. When your starter gets too warm (and Goldie’s LED indicator turns red), just place the puck on top of your starter jar and rest assured that your starter will live for another day! When your starter’s at its happiest ideal state, Goldie’s LED indicator glows gold, letting you know that everything’s just fine.

Each Goldie measures a compact 130mm (5.1 inches) in diameter, and 216mm (or 8.5 inches) in height, fitting comfortably on your kitchen countertop. The chamber itself comfortably fits almost any standard pint-sized jar, and can even squeeze a quart sized mason jar in, but with no headroom for the cooling puck (although Sourhouse’s quart sized Starter Jar was designed to leave enough room for the puck). The incubation chamber runs on incredibly low energy, and powers via USB, allowing you to hook Goldie to a wall outlet, a power bank, or even your laptop! Goldie ships internationally for a discounted price of $99 along with one cooling puck. The Sourhouse glass jars are available as add-ons, and if you want extra cooling pucks, there’s a 3-pack available separately too (just in case you’ve got multiple jars of starter going and you’re planning on firing that oven up!)

Click Here to Buy Now: $106 $139 (24% off). Hurry, for a limited time only! Raised over $70,000.

The post Want to grow the perfect Sourdough Starter? This temperature-controlled incubator may help! first appeared on Yanko Design.