A new appliance, the Sourdough Sidekick, feeds and maintains your sourdough starter for up to a week. For $179.95, just add flour and water and walk away! But do you really want to do that?
“Caring for a sourdough starter can feel intimidating,” the promo video begins. To feed a starter, you stir fresh flour and water into a spoonful of starter in a jar. That takes up to five minutes. Read about the uncomplicated process here. Or read the 47-page Sourdough Sidekick manual here. Many people, myself included when I started out, find starting a starter intimidating but according to this Forbes review (which was mostly positive by the way), the Sourdough Sidekick can’t make a starter.
When manually maintaining a starter, you will have to interact with it occasionally, as with any pet. And you wouldn’t put Fluffy on autofeed. (However, unlike with a pet, you can take a break from feedings and store your starter in the refrigerator for a week or so when you need a break.)
If corporations don’t make up problems—e.g., mere mortals can’t possibly keep a sourdough starter alive—how will they sell us new products that “solve” those supposed problems? (Consumers could make marketers orgasmic and buy another brainchild of manufactured need for this machine: bottled water.)
The Sourdough Sidekick marketing emphasizes the amount of time bakers will save. If that marketing speaks to you, is the problem really that you don’t have five minutes a day to maintain a starter? Perhaps you have more of a time management problem or an I’m-dangling-by-the-fingernails-I-have-so-many-demands problem. This machine won’t address those issues.
Maybe you simply don’t want to fully commit to a sourdough starter and would rather have more of a side piece, like active dry yeast. With store-bought, active dry yeast, you can bake delicious bread—not sourdough mind you—whenever you get the urge rather than having to nurture a relationship with a starter. And that’s okay! The active dry yeast is into it. It makes awesome no-knead bread, the gateway carb to sourdough. Simply mix the bread ingredients in a bowl, let it sit overnight, form a loaf, proof and bake.
Here’s yet another problem with the I-don’t-have-time-to-maintain-a-starter marketing: If new sourdough bakers (I’m assuming this gadget appeals to new bakers) don’t have five minutes a day to feed a starter, how will they find the time to bake the bread? While the process is fairly hands-off, it’s certainly not completely hands-off.
The marketing also boasts triumphantly, “No discard!”* But I love discard! It makes delicious pancakes, crackers, naan, tortillas, pitas and other flat breads. As an aged clone of my starter Eleanor, discard also serves as an insurance policy if she becomes ill—or if someone accidentally cooks all of her in a recipe. I can feed a spoonful of discard a few times to revive our partnership.
I’m not anti-appliance. I bake my sourdough bread in an indoor induction-electric range after all, not an outdoor wood fired clay oven (sadly). I sew on an electric sewing machine—and a serger. I don’t beat my dirty clothes on rocks in a river; I wash them in a washing machine. So I’m nowhere near Robinson Crusoe-level self-sufficiency nor do I want to be. But some kitchen gadgets strike me as a bit silly. (If you’ve bought one of these and love it, great!)
* for the most part
This gadget that maintains sourdough starter, which people have harnessed to bake bread for around 6,000 years, features an app, software and software updates.
The people creating apps and software and software updates send their kids to schools like Waldorf, where students never look at screens (and aren’t supposed to at home either). Instead, Waldorf integrates skills like knitting and baking and gardening into its academics. Why do the makers of tech send their kids to schools like Waldorf? Because they want their kids to learn something.
Similarly, as an adult, if you want to learn how to bake sourdough, I’d suggest playing with flour, getting your hands dirty and skipping this machine.
If I had started my sourdough journey with one of these appliances, I don’t know if I would ever have learned how to take care of a starter. When checking on Eleanor, I need to “feel” her consistency as I stir. If the fork glides right through, she needs to be fed. If an elastic consistency resists the fork, Eleanor is likely ready to bake with. Smell also offers clues. Does the starter smell fruity? Sour? Stinky? I could pull the jar and paddle doodad out of the machine to give the starter a sniff (and a taste) but an upcycled jar is simpler to manage, easier to clean, occupies less counter space, requires zero electricity to do the job, costs nothing and can easily be recycled at the end of its useful life.
The people who have bought this machine have given it an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars. So many bakers like it. But as with cooking, or knitting, or writing or any other skill, you may want to learn how to maintain your starter before you rely on technology. I could use AI to write my newsletters, for example (I don’t). But I write not only to inform an audience but also to understand a topic—to learn something. While this machine does some of the work for you, you’ll miss out on a learning opportunity in the process.
Recently an interviewer asked me why I love baking sourdough bread. I said the simplicity of it appeals to me most (besides the flavor of course!). With only flour, water and salt, I can bake amazing bread. Every loaf I pull out of the oven seems like a little miracle. And yes I do need some tools to bake sourdough but not this one.
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