Sourdough Home: A Starter Proofer & Cooler
- Quiet, electric proofer
- Cooler for storing your sourdough starter
- Temperature range 41-122°F (5-50°C)
- Digital display in Fahrenheit or Celsius
- Compact size
- Fits a 1 quart jar
- Recommended by Maurizio Leo
$119.00
In stock Usually ships in 1-3 business days.
The Home Your Starter Deserves
Precise Temperature Control
Great bread begins with a great starter and when it comes to sourdough starter, temperature is everything! The complex mix of microbes that cause bread to rise (and give your bread a distinctive flavor and aroma) are extremely sensitive to their environment. The Sourdough Home provides an easy way to precisely control the behavior of your starter. With degree-by-degree control from 41-122°F (5-50°C) you can maintain a consistent temperature or vary it to control the growth rate, aroma, and flavor of your bread. You can switch the temperature display from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
The inside of the proofer measures 5-1/8" x 5.5" x 7.5" which allows a 1 quart jar or two smaller jars to fit inside. Two shelves are included for flexible storage of small items.
As acclaimed sourdough baker Maurizio Leo from the Perfect Loaf blog explains in the video above "It's important that a sourdough starter is maintained in a consistent way, but the challenge there is that the temperature in your kitchen, even from one side of the kitchen to the other, can vary quite drastically... one of the great things about the Sourdough Home is that it allows you to effortlessly dial in the temperature that you want to keep your sourdough starter at."
Offers Flexibility
The Sourdough Home by Brod & Taylor offers a convenient, quiet, and compact way to maintain the temperature of your sourdough starter at the exact temperature you want to keep it at, whether that's a warm environment as you're preparing to bake with it, or a cool environment if you want to store it between bakes. The Sourdough Home both cools and heats, so you have total flexibility with how often you want to feed your starter, whether that's twice a day or once a week, or anywhere in between.
Sourdough starter maintenance
Sourdough starter is a living colony of yeast and good bacteria. Like any living thing it needs to eat—just flour and water. Feeding your starter the proper ingredients at the right time is the first step in creating great sourdough bread. Using the precise temperature control of the Sourdough Home, you can adjust starter feeding times to meet your schedule.
As starter ferments and grows, it creates CO2 bubbles that cause the mixture to rise in its container. The ideal time to feed starter is when the rise has peaked—all of its food has been consumed—and before it begins to fall again. By using a constant seed ratio (quantity of flour and water) and controlling the temperature, you can control the feeding schedule to hours, days or even a week. Use the guidelines below to get started.
About Brod & Taylor
In a small town in Western Massachusetts, Brod & Taylor was founded on a passion for making wholesome food from scratch. Their products transform this often challenging process into a simple pleasure by blending innovative design with simplicity, affordability, and outstanding customer support.
Specs
Shipping
Accessories for this product:
Login
1 - 10 of 19 reviews
In a home environment and even in some commercial environments, it's quite difficult to control all the variables related to proper fermentation (of anything, really). Control of variables leads to consistency of results as well as the ability to drill down and tweak one variable at a time when experimenting or "tinkering with your dough" as Peter Reinhart and others like to say. For those who are interested in control and don't already have or have room for a larger proofer/retarder, this little thing is great for controlling the growth and balance of your starter.
There is some off-gassing of the product at first use. I let the unit sit unplugged with the door open for a couple of hours and then with the unit on for another hour with the temp set close to the current room temp and the smell dissipated.
It's a bit lighter than I imagined it would be and I find myself needing two hands to open it without it sliding. Will probably add some rubber or grippy feet to it (most likely an issue with my countertop surface and not the unit).
Really helpful product to promote starter health by keeping it a steady temperature. Only then can feeding routines be maintained consistently. Wish B&T would make a large version!
Works great!! My wife was having trouble finding a warm spot in the house for her starter. This solved the problem, use it every day!!
A lot of the baking I do is sourdough and have had issues with maintaining lower temperatures for longer ferments. I already had one Sourdough Home and decided to buy a second one so that I can maintain my starter while using the second when needing a higher temps. I keep one at 45 and the other at 65 or higher depending on what I will be baking.
As others have said, it is a game changer for consistency in temperatures. My wife isn’t too pleased with all of my gadgets but she doesn’t complain about the quality of the baking.
I figure it's cheaper to use the Sourdough Home to control a small environment with the optimal temperature than to turn up the heat when I'm trying to keep my utility costs down. With gas appliances going out of political favor (ahem), pilot lights might become few and far between. The Sourdough Home is the right appliance at the right time.
I’m new to sourdough but the sourdough home has made keeping my starter easy! Wonderful product and easy to use especially for a beginner. Highly recommend.
I'm thrilled to have this "happy home" for my starter. This product has really upped my bread making to a brand new level. Knowing that sourdough is very sensitive to temp variations like countertop to refrigerator care, not to mention seasonal changes, I decided to investigate this product. After much research, I decided to pull the trigger. And I'm glad I did ! Not only is my starter happy and vigorous but I can now make bread on my own schedule.
What's not to love?!
Living in Montana with sub zero temps, it was a struggle to keep a constant, warm enough temperature to keep my starter active for baking. Having it in its "home" makes it a much happier baking home for me too!
The sourdough Home Starter proofer is an amazing device, and truly a game changer for having aconsistent temperature during the starter development and Levan stages. I bake sourdough bread every two weeks or so and have come to appreciate the accuracy of the devlice. The Sourdough Home unit removes any guesswork when preparing sourdough bread. Truly a game changer for sourdough bread preparation.
I’ve kept sourdough starter several times, but the sourdough kept in at the optimum temperature in the Sourdough Home, is amazing. No longer losing the sourdough flavor as my old starters always did. When I remove the jar to feed, I’m now greeted with the wonderful sourdough smell instead of fairly yeasty as my old starters kept in the fridge did. My family is thrilled to be able to have sourdough breads that actually taste like San Francisco sourdough!
Thank you, Pleasant Hill Grain.