If you’re a baking girlie (or you wanna be), we hope you’re sat. Jennifer Yoko Olson (she/her), co-founder of Sourhouse, is one of us—a home baker, that is. She’s also an industrial designer, meaning she designs IRL products that are both gorgeous and useful. At the start of the pandemic—when many of us discovered sourdough—she and her co-founder realized they didn’t have access to the kinds of dedicated products they wanted to use in the kitchen. So, they started Sourhouse “to make sourdough baking easier and more accessible for everyone with functional, beautifully designed tools and free resources like cookbooks and webinars.”

For our last Down to Earth (and Stop Food Waste Day!) feature, she tells us about what’s new at the company and shares a tasty recipe that makes the most out of sourdough discard to prevent unnecessary food loss.

 

We’ve got some avid bakers reading The Newsette. Can you tell us about Sourdough’s incredible gadget, Goldie, and why you invented it?
Sourdough starter happens to thrive in a temperature range of 75-82°F, which is a little too warm for how most of us keep our homes. So a lot of sourdough bakers struggle with underactive starter in their cooler homes and have a hard time baking great bread. My co-founder Erik and I were baffled by all the crazy (and sometimes dangerous) DIY tricks people resorted to to warm up their starter, like wrapping Christmas lights around their starter jars, and we were sure that the world was ready for a simple, beautiful solution to keep their starter warm. Goldie warms up your starter to the Goldilocks Zone of 75-82°F and keeps it there. With a steady starter temperature, your starter will be more active, and the rise time will be more consistent. This makes planning your bake day so much easier! Erik and I were right about our hunch. Goldie is now sold at our website, Williams Sonoma, and retailers in six countries around the world, and it has helped tens of thousands of bakers make better and more delicious sourdough bread.

Is there anything new coming up for Sourhouse?
Yes! We are launching a Kickstarter campaign for our new product, DoughBed! After having solved the problem of chilly starter, we are now working on the challenge of proofing bread dough just right, every time. We will be announcing the launch date to our notification list shortly. And in July we will be launching Bread Blankets, which are cozy muslin square wraps to keep your bread fresh and protected. They’re also perfect for summer picnics and potlucks as they double as a tablecloth or picnic blanket.

And for the best part: What’s a sourdough discard recipe we could use for Stop Food Waste Day and beyond?
My favorite way to use sourdough discard is to make pancakes. What I love about this particular recipe is that it doesn’t use any additional flour, which means you can use up your pile of discard pretty quickly, so that your fridge doesn’t get overtaken! Each batch will come out slightly different from the last, depending on how young or old your starter is. Old, runnier starter will give you flatter, cakier pancakes (best for the sweet recipe), and young, glutenous starter will come out more bread-like (best for the savory recipe). Play around with it and find your favorite way!