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Feeding Your Sourdough Starter Just Got A Lot Easier With This New Smart Gadget
Whether you're on vacation or simply having a hectic week, making the time to feed your sourdough starter can be a huge commitment. But despite this, sourdough baking has never been so popular. Now, two companies have joined forces to solve the number one problem home bakers face.
GE Appliance's innovative hub FirstBuild and the King Arthur Baking Company have just announced the Sourdough Sidekick. It's the first gadget that automatically feeds and builds sourdough starter totally hands-free, and on your schedule.
How does the Sourdough Sidekick work? (Image credit: FirstBuild/King Arthur Baking Company)According to King Arthur's 2024 Bread Baking Survey, 60% of bread bakers now maintain an active starter. And this is not a small undertaking, as countless sourdough forums and threads online will tell you.
The Sourdough Sidekick eliminates the chore of daily starter maintenance — one of the top frustrations for sourdough bakers, not only by doing the feeding itself, but by automatically adjusting its temperature to ensure your starter is in its ideal environment.
André Zdanow, FirstBuild President, says, "By combining our hardware innovation expertise with King Arthur Baking Company's centuries of baking knowledge, we've created a solution that eliminates the demanding daily maintenance schedule while making sourdough more accessible even when life gets busy."
Features (Image credit: FirstBuild/King Arthur Baking Company)The Sourdough Sidekick has three main features which are designed to make life easier for the baker, all based around a smart feeding system that does the hard work for you.
The "auto" mode allows you to tell the device how much starter your recipe needs and when it's needed, down to the day and hour. All you'll need to do is fill the flour and water hoopers, add a seed amount and leave the Sourdough Sidekick to do the rest for up to 7 days.
There's also a "custom" mode for experienced bakers that tackles scheduling issues, while maintaining preferred feeding ratios and frequency, so you can even keep your starter happy while you're away.
Thirdly, it features a temperature sensor that adjusts the feeding of the starter based on the environment.
You can discover more about the Sourdough Sidekick and how it works here.
When will it be available?The Sourdough Sidekick will be launched on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo on March 25, but it's not expected to be shipped to backers until January 2026. In the meantime, if you're keen to get your hands on this device, you can sign up on the waiting list.
The rising popularity of sourdoughThe popularity of making sourdough grew during the pandemic, but it continues to remain in favor with home bakers. A recent study from King Arthur revealed that 60% of homebread bakers now maintain an active starter. What's more, the company's sourdough content attracted 18.4 million views in the past year, with its sourdough starter recipe topping 1.3 million views.
King Arthur's Fresh Sourdough Starter is its top-selling direct-to-consumer item, indicating the continued interest in sourdough baking.
Karen Colberg, CEO of King Arthur Baking Company, says, "We've helped generations of bakers master the art of maintaining a sourdough starter, and with the Sourdough Sidekick, we're building on that expertise. This innovation makes sourdough more accessible — whether you're a seasoned baker or just starting out."
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This Salem Bakery's Breads And Pastries Live Up To Heavenly Name
Across the street from Riverfront Park is Salem's slice of sunshine, Manna Bakery. You can't miss its welcoming yellow stoop, the smell of freshly baked bread, and the almost constant stream of people in and out the door.
The bakery is most known for its breads, which all use long-ferment sourdough starter. The short and sweet name "Manna" means "bread from heaven," and the baked goods selection is nothing short of that description.
Owners Dirk Liechty and Lydia Shore opened two years ago to make delicious breads and pastries that highlight the local produce. They had previously worked the markets for Albany's Bodhi Bakery, where Shore was head baker from 2018 until they left in 2022.
The couple had grown to love Salem while working at the Saturday farmers market and started the Manna business as market vendors. Once they opened the spot downtown, it grew quickly and expanded with a cafe space next door.
The classic butter croissant ($5) is rotund and over three inches tall, and possibly the best in Salem. Each bite has the perfect, not-too-flaky-flakiness and rich butter taste, which pairs perfectly with a cup of coffee. There are also several sweet and savory varieties of filled croissants ($6), croissant danishes ($6), and even croissant twists ($6).
The flavors are driven by "mostly divine inspiration," Liechty joked. "It's a combination of what's in season and how to creatively reuse the same 15 ingredients that we stock in the pantry."
In the summer months, a plethora of strawberry, cherry, rhubarb and other berry delights hit the shelves.
The Salem sourdough ($8) is the bakery's classic bread, available in loaf and boule. It has a crispy crust, soft crumb, and a strong sourdough taste. You can also get it sliced before you head out the door.
The takeaway: The menu is consistent throughout the year, but flavors will change as seasonal produce rotates. Come in early to get your pick of the day-of specials, with hot hand pies ($10) and cookies ($3) selling out first. Those hot hand pies include mushroom risotto (vegetarian), cornish beef and the newly released chicken tikka masala. As for the cookies, I recommend the miso butter pecan and honey doodle.
Sample menu: Lightly tossed sesame-ginger chicken salad sandwiched inside a butter croissant ($14). Warm, flaky mushroom risotto hand pie ($10), giant square cinnamon roll ($5), and long eclairs ($6).
Drinks: Black coffee ($3), various loose-leaf teas ($3), Rhythm Kombucha's Cosmic Roots (half-pint $4, full pint $7), hot chocolate ($3), chai latte ($5), golden milk latte ($5), regular or raspberry lemonade ($4).
Details: Table service with limited seating plus Salem Saturday Farmers Market stand starting April. Hours are 8 a.M.-2 p.M. Tuesday to Saturday; 237 State St., Salem; instagram.Com/mannaoregon/
— Em Chan, for The Oregonian/OregonLive
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Micro Bakery Simply Sourdough Provides Fresh-baked Goods To Liberty Hill
When she first began making sourdough in 2022, Simply Sourdough owner and founder Kellsey Hibbs didn't think she had room in her life to start a bakery. As the mother to four young children, taking care of her family was a full-time job.
"I have always loved being in the kitchen, but I have no formal training," she said. "I had no interest in starting my own business or even learning sourdough."
Three years and an estimated 5,000 loaves of bread later, Hibbs is now running Simply Sourdough out of her home in Liberty Hill's Orchard Ridge neighborhood, producing dozens of loaves fresh-baked bread for the community every week.
The backstory
When Hibbs' husband was unexpectedly laid off in 2022, the family was left without income for five months. Hibbs began brainstorming ideas to help generate some money, and when she discovered a sourdough baking community on TikTok, she decided to give it a try.
"I literally decided in about 30 seconds that I was going to be a sourdough baker," she said. "I went to HEB and got bowls and whisks and everything TikTok said I needed, and I said, 'Great. I'm a sourdough baker now. This is who I am, this is my personality.'"
Going from fledgling breadmaker to professional baker took a lot of trial and error. Hibbs said she spent about a month fixating on all things sourdough, spending every second of her limited free time watching YouTube videos and learning the tricks of the trade. She went through 15 to 20 failed batches of starter before she started feeling comfortable with the basics, and it took another 8 months of baking four days a week before she felt like she was any good at it.
Soon, neighbors who heard she'd been baking fresh sourdough started to inquire about special orders, so Hibbs started selling loaves to people around the community. Demand for her baked goods grew so high that she decided to formally start a business, founding Simply Sourdough LLC in October 2023.
How it works
Since Simply Sourdough doesn't have a brick-and-mortar storefront, customers need to place their order through the bakery's website. Hibbs spends every Sunday night feeding her dough starter, and reserves Monday to make dough, sometimes working up to 12 hours a day to get orders prepared. She bakes on Tuesday, and puts orders out for pickup on her front porch by 4 p.M. Hibbs estimates she bakes anywhere from 40-60 loaves every Tuesday, not including the additional pastries, cookies and snacks.
Her front porch display shelf sorts orders by customer, and she even prepares an "extras" rack in case she has more bread than is needed.
"I will always do 10-15 extra loaves in case I mess up, so I give myself a big margin of error," she said. "If everything goes great, I'll put those out. I usually have people waiting in their cars at 4 to be first-come, first-serve on the extras."
What they offer
Simply Sourdough has grown to include more than just loaves of bread. The bakery also produces cookies, cinnamon rolls, pizza dough and toaster waffles, all made with Hibbs' sourdough. She even sells samples of her sourdough starter so home bakers can start their own journey.
At one point, demand for Hibbs' services was so high that she started teaching online courses to train up to 50 students at a time how to create their own sourdough. Hibbs said she has pared back the classes for now to allow her more time to focus on her baking.
What else?
Despite the company's success, Hibbs said she currently has no plans of opening a physical storefront or expanding the business further.
"The whole reason I started this was to be able to be with my kids and have a flexible schedule, be at every soccer game, be at every school play," she said. "My goal is to maintain this and grow in areas that I want to, and if this is as big as it gets, I'm happy with that."
Hibbs said sourdough baking aligns with her beliefs about keeping food local and ethically sourced.
"I just want people to get a degree closer to their food," she said. "I think it's really important to support local bakers and local farmers and know where your food comes from. Once you taste fresh bread, it's really hard to go back."
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