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Sourdough Home: A Starter Proofer & Cooler

$119.00

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.

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Specs

Manufacturer Part Number
SH-100
UPC/EAN Number
856805005425
Warranty Length
1 yr (or 3 yrs with registration)
Brand
Brod & Taylor
Color
White
Length
11"
Width
8"
Height
10"
Capacity (volume)
1 qt.
Temperature Range
41-122°F (5 - 50°C)
Power Source
Electric (AC)
Origin
Imported
Country of Manufacture
China

Shipping

We stock this product in our Nebraska warehouse. Most of our shipments are by UPS Ground or Home Delivery and you should receive your order in five business days or less from ship-out. Click here for more information about shipping.

Accessories for this product:

The Perfect Loaf: Sourdough Recipes

The Perfect Loaf is the first baking book by Maurizio Leo and it's a dynamic, authoritative sourdough bible for those looking to build confidence in the craft with a wide range of foolproof recipes, from pan loaves to pizza to doughnuts.

Maurizio Leo’s blog The Perfect Loaf is the go-to destination on the internet for beginner sourdough bakers. He now brings his impeccably detailed techniques, foolproof recipes, and generous teaching style to a groundbreaking debut cookbook that delves into the absolute fundamentals of sourdough—plus the tools and confidence to explore beyond.

Maurizio has spent 10+ years discovering how to bake delicious and healthy sourdough bread in the home kitchen, and now it's all in his book. This book will help you become a better baker!

60 recipes cover flavorful, crowd-pleasing favorites, including...

Beginner bakers will have their hands held the entire way, with troubleshooting sections and numerous sidebars answering almost every question they may have—like how to store a sourdough starter long-term, how bakers’ percentages actually work, and a visual guide to common “bread fails” and how to remedy them. Seasoned bakers will relish deep dives into the science behind baking processes and expert information on how to build their “baker’s intuition” and level up by experimenting with hydration, ingredient ratios, freshly milled grains, and specialty flours. Whether you’re new to bread baking or a pro, The Perfect Loaf will be your indispensable guide in the kitchen.

“Maurizio Leo has given all bread-heads, whether newbies or experienced bakers, the ideal gift.” —Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and host of Pizza Quest

“There is no book written specifically for home bakers that surpasses this one.”—Jeffrey Hamelman, baker and author of Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes

“It’s like a textbook you use at a late-night study session, then realize you’re enjoying it so much that it becomes bedtime reading.” —WIRED

Maurizio Leo is a home baker and the creator of the award-winning sourdough website, The Perfect Loaf. He's currently the Resident Bread Baker at Food52 and a regular contributor to the King Arthur Baking blog. His articles and recipes on bread baking have appeared in Edible New Mexico, the Bread Baker's Guild of America, and Bread Magazine. He holds a master's degree in computer science, is a co-creator of the award-winning stargazing app SkyView, and has spent the past decade baking sourdough bread in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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$39.00

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Customer reviews

PHG provides product-giveaway sweepstakes entries to all submitters of reviews, a program which also accepts entries without purchase. Take advantage of this program for repeated opportunities to win great PHG products! Nature of review does not influence odds of winning. Full contest rules are available here. All reviews are by verified buyers.

Overall Rating:

19 reviews
per page

1 - 10 of 19 reviews

Control = Consistency
By Kyle on 3/31/2024 Verified Buyer

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).

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Sourdough Home
By WenJ on 5/27/2024 Verified Buyer

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!

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Great Product!!
By Richard Spaziante on 3/30/2024 Verified Buyer

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!!

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Phenomenal
By Darin B. on 3/23/2024 Verified Buyer

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.

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With electric oven, cold kitchen, my proofing dough needs a warm hug.
By Mary Hefferan on 3/23/2024 Verified Buyer

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.

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Great product
By Sam on 3/23/2024 Verified Buyer

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.

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Happy Sourdough Home
By Mary Leahy on 1/20/2024 Verified Buyer

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?!

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Love ❤️ it
By WCHRIS on 1/20/2024 Verified Buyer

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!

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Sourdough Home proofer, a game changer
By Robert Currie on 1/19/2024 Verified Buyer

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.

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Makes keeping starter easy.
By Cellanjie on 12/07/2023 Verified Buyer

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.

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