Asheville, NC – Every sourdough baker keeps a starter and is constantly looking for warm spots in their kitchen to store it. Sourdough starters can be bad roommates even in the best of times because they are happiest in rooms that are just too warm for most humans. Drafty homes and Spring cold snaps make starters even grumpier and baking even harder.

Sourdough bakers now have a consistently warm, safe home for their sourdough starters with the introduction of Goldie by Sourhouse. Designed by a pair of sourdough homebakers, Erik Fabian and Jennifer Yoko Olson, Goldie by Sourhouse provides just enough warmth to keep a sourdough starter consistently in the “Goldilocks Zone” of 75-82ºF where it is the most active and healthy, so bakers can bake their best bread all year round without warming up their whole house.

Available now for pre-order at prices 23-24% off of MSRP via Kickstarter.com, Goldie by Sourhouse is the first warming device dedicated to a sourdough starter. Kickstarter has named Goldie a “Project We Love” and the campaign surpassed its minimum funding goal within three days.

Goldie by Sourhouse features gentle heat to warm a starter without the risk of overheating it; a small footprint with the capacity to hold up to a quart sized jar; an auto-warming on/off switch; a transparent, borosilicate glass cloche so bakers can see their starter from anywhere in their kitchen; a simple three-zone thermometer (indicated with blue, gold, and red lights) that helps bakers understand their starter’s behavior and anticipate their time to bake; a Sourhouse Cooling Puck for the occasional need to cool down a starter in a too hot room in preparation for baking. Goldie is built with energy efficiency in mind, is food safe, water resistant, and cleans up with a damp sponge.

Sourhouse is also releasing the new Sourhouse Starter Jar, designed to be the easiest to clean starter jar in the world. The borosilicate glass jars are designed without those threads you find on jars with screw top lids so dried starter cannot accumulate. The unique lid design sits on the outside of the jar to keep the jar covered and still easy to clean. The jar has a flat bottom, so you get great contact with the warming base in Goldie and very efficient warmth transfer.

Sourhouse Starter Jar is currently available in pint and quart size. On the sides of the pint size jar are dots in 50ml and 100ml increments for judging when your starter has doubled (or tripled). The quart size jar has 100ml and 200ml dots for those of you who like to keep larger starters or to build a levain in advance of a bake. Each jar comes with a gold rubber band too.

Active Sourdough Starter is Essential to Great Bread

Every sourdough baker keeps a starter: a slurry of flour and water inoculated with beneficial bacteria and yeasts that puff and flavor sourdough bread. Bakers care for their starters kind of like a pet: they feed them regularly, they often name them, they endure the moods of their starters as the seasons change.

An active, healthy starter rises bread faster and more consistently. A sourdough starter is most active and develops that family pleasing, balanced sweet & sour flavor in the “Goldilocks Zone” of 75-82ºF (~24-28ºC). Unfortunately, that is a bit too warm for people. Most people like to keep their home around 68-70ºF (~20-21ºC) all year round.

“My sourdough starter was living a wandering life, always in search of a warm spot in my kitchen,” says Erik Fabian, co-founder of Sourhouse. “With Goldie I am able to bake better bread more consistently and faster.”

Sourdough bakers use a variety of DIY methods to warm their starters, such as putting their starters in the over with the light on. All of these DIY approaches have drawbacks. What baker hasn’t heard of someone accidentally turning on their oven and baking their only starter. Goldie helps bakers stop worrying about disaster and get back to baking bread.

Sourhouse Started as Zoom Calls During the Covid Lockdowns of 2020 In March of 2020, during the first Covid lock-downs 2020, Erik Fabian and Jenny Yoko Olson started a weekly chat over Zoom about design, storytelling and the future. Erik had an idea for a device that warms up sourdough starter. Starting from pencil sketches and an elaborate spreadsheet of temperature experiments, Sourhouse was born. Jenny learned to make sourdough bread to better understand the challenges of making bread and why starter is so important to consistent results.

“I knew Erik wanted to create a kind of altar to sourdough that bakers could proudly display in their kitchen,” says Jennifer Yoko Olson, an industrial designer and co-founder of Sourhouse. “I envisioned something modern, elegant and with a little accent of charm.”

How KickstarterWorks

For those who haven’t backed a Kickstarter project before, here is what you need to know.

1. Kickstarter helps creators fund projects by connecting backers who would like to see projects (like Goldie) happen.
2. Sourhouse set their own project funding goal and deadline. They’ve chosen a $39,000 goal to cover the minimum costs of making Goldie by Sourhouse, creating the videos, website and all the other things they’ve done to share this project. With their backers’ help, Sourhouse surpassed that minimum goal in less than three days. The project closes on May 3rd, 2022 at 11:59 PM US Eastern Time.
3. When enough people back the project and it succeeds in reaching its funding goal (lIke Goldie has), the backer’s credit card will be charged for the reward they’ve selected when campaign time expires on May 3rd. If the project had fallen short of the funding goal, no one would have been charged. Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. That's why a community sharing the story of Goldie is so critical to making the project successful.
4. Now that the project is funded, Sourhouse is going into action: collecting shipping information, providing shipping costs, ordering the first run of Goldies from the factory, packaging up rewards and delivering your rewards to the bakers.
   

About Sourhouse

Sourhouse envisions a world where people gather daily to share homemade sourdough bread and other fermented foods. We design objects that become the center of daily rituals in the kitchen and an expression of their personal identity. We make experiences that create platforms for people to gather, share and learn. Sourhouse is co-founded by a pair of sourdough home bakers: Erik Fabian and Jennifer Yoko Olson.

Learn more about Sourhouse at: sourhouse.co

Embeddable Goldie video available: http://kck.st/3x10E7D A full media kit is available here: sourhouse.co/press

Press Product Previews are available on request in NYC and Asheville, NC. For more information and interview requests: Erik Fabian (hello@sourhouse.co)

Sourdough bakers (and people looking for gifts for bakers) can learn more at: https://sourhouse.co/goldie.

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