Frequently Asked Questions

Sure...

Yes. If it fits inside, it will work.

See the photo gallery on the Goldie product page for Goldie's size specification and an illustration showing which popular jars fit in Goldie.

Goldie is designed to work internationally!

Goldie uses so little power (under 5W) that it runs via USB, which works with a wide range of power regions: 100~240V, 50~60Hz.

You can power Goldie by plugging it into a USB power outlet, or by using a 5V1A USB-to-wall adaptor that fits your local power outlet type.

Don’t worry, it is totally normal for Goldie’s warming plate to not feel warm to touch even while the auto-warming is on.

This is because Goldie’s target temperature of 75-82ºF / 24.4-27.7ºC is cooler than our body temperature.

So unless you have cold hands, you won’t feel the warmth. Sourdough likes to be slightly warmer than we do, and that subtle temperature difference makes a huge difference for your starter.

This can happen if your power adapter is malfunctioning. Try swapping out with another 5V USB-to-wall adapter. If you have any questions, shoot us an e-mail at support@sourhouse.co.

Goldie is for you if:

• You bake sourdough and live in a home with a room temperature in the low 70’s F / 20’s C - or cooler.

• You struggle with sourdough baking because your starter is not very active.

• You bake sourdough and are frustrated by being at mercy of your starter’s mood.

• You have tried sourdough in the past without much success, and are looking to give it another go.

• You are excited to become a sourdough baker and want all the support you can get. 

Goldie is not for you if:

• Your home is already in the Goldilocks Zone all year round.
  (Lucky you!)

• You are not sure if sourdough is your thing yet.
  (You can start baking sourdough with just a jar, a bowl and an oven. A scale and a thermometer should come next. Give it a go and get a few loaves under your belt, we’ll be here when you’re ready!)

Goldie is designed to live on your counter as a home for your starter, but the auto-warming feature can be turned on or off to fit your baking routine and personal preferences.

For example, if you are an avid baker who bakes daily, it probably makes sense to keep the auto-warming on 24/7, and feed your starter once a day or more.

If you bake a few times a week, then you can keep your starter inside Goldie, and turn off auto-warming between bake days to save the number of feeds (and flour).

If you are a weekend baker or bake less than once a week, you might like to keep your starter in the fridge between your bakes. Goldie helps your starter get back into action by allowing you to fit more feeds within a short amount of time (ex: three peak-to-peak feeding the day before your bake day).

If you are establishing a new starter from scratch, keeping the auto-warming on all day will help the correct microbes get established and active more quickly.

Top Lamp: This is Goldie’s Temperature Lamp, which helps you understand how your starter is feeling. The Temperature Lamp is always on, and displays one of three colors.

• Blue when your starter is feeling chilly and sluggish in your cool kitchen.
• Gold when your starter is just right, tucked into the Goldilocks Zone, healthy and active.
• Red when your kitchen has gotten too hot, overheating and exhausting your starter.

Most baker's kitchens are in the blue all year round. Goldie's job is to keep your starter out of the blue zone whenever you want an active starter.

Live with these three temperature lights for a bit and you will start seeing the world through the eyes of your starter. Your starter will become less mysterious and more dependable.

Bottom Lamp: This is Goldie’s  Auto-Warming Lamp, which indicates that the auto-warming feature has been activated. If the bottom light is off, it means auto-warming is turned off.

A really simple way to get to know Goldie would be to try placing things of different temperature on the flat plate of Warming Base - like a jar of warm water or ice water - you will see the Temperature Lamp change its color.

To test Goldie’s warming performance, you can take the temperature of your starter using a probe thermometer (like the one you’d stick into dough or a piece of meat). Make sure your starter has a chance to warm up before testing the temperature. If your starter was in the fridge, or if your home is on the cold side, this may take longer.

Another way to test Goldie is to use infrared / laser thermometers. Point the laser at various points on the warming plate while the auto-warming is turned on. If you read a range between 75-82ºF / 24.4-27.7ºC, your Goldie is in business!

Goldie has an auto-warming switch in the back.

Slide the switch to the on position (toward the wavy lines icon) when you want your starter to be in the Goldilocks Zone (75-82ºF). Slide it off (toward the crossed-out wavy lines icon) when you want your starter at room temperature.

When you slide the auto-warming switch on, the bottom (gold) lamp in the front will turn on.

The auto-warming switch (located at the back of Goldie) allows you to turn the auto-warming feature on and off. Here are a few scenarios where turning it off make sense:

• Maintenance mode - if you’re not planning on baking anytime soon and you are just maintaining your starter, then there’s no need to have your starter rising at top speed. When you are keeping your starter at room temperature, you can feed it less frequently (typically one feed/day), and save flour.
• Your starter got ready before you are - If your starter has peaked before you’re ready to add it to your dough, you can turn the auto-warming off to keep the peak for longer.

Don’t worry, this is not a sign of Goldie’s malfunction. Goldie warms your starter directly by conductive heat, not by warming the air inside the glass cloche. Your starter will be warmed faster than the air around the jar. Using gentle conductive heat is what makes Goldie so energy efficient. Depending on your room temperature, the air temperature inside your cloche may not ever get up to the Goldilocks Zone - and that is just fine, as long as your starter does.

Fogging can happen inside Goldie’s cloche if your kitchen is at a very different temp than the inside of the cloche. In those situations, humidity from the air and evaporation from your jar may create water vapor within the cloche. This fogging is not harmful to your starter or Goldie - in fact, humidity actually helps your starter be more active -  but you can minimize fogging by keeping your jar closed tight.

Don’t worry, it’s not broken! Goldie’s temperature sensor detects the temperature of Goldie, not the temperature of your starter. When the auto-warming feature is turned on, that means that Goldie’s warming plate is in the Goldilocks Zone, but it still may take a little time for your starter to warm up to Goldie’s temperature.

Yes we do! Here is the link.

Yes. You can remove your starter from the fridge, feed and put it directly into Goldie to warm up (with the auto-warming switch on)

Sourhouse currently makes both a Pint and Quart size jars for sourdough starter.

You can pick your prefered size on the Starter Jar product page.

If you have interest in any other variations, let us know via our Contact Page.

Unlike most jars out there, you can close the lid of the Sourhouse Starter Jars all the way and your starter can still breathe. If you look at the underside there are shallow channels in the lid that allow air movement. Those channels let the gas out, so that nothing is holding down your starter’s rise.

We have all had a starter get a bit too ripe on occasion and it can make your lid a bit stinky.

The lid of the Sourhouse Starter Jar is SILICONE, so smells can be easily removed by either boiling, leaving it out in the sun, or baking it at a low temp.

You can "bake" your jar's silicone lid safely at 300F. Make sure you wash your lid with dish soap before doing so, to ensure there is no oil residue (you don't want to bake this on.) Check every 10 minutes or so to see if the smell is gone (but please take care not to burn yourself doing so!) How long it takes would depend on the severity of the smell - could be 20min, could be 50min.

You will find our current exchange and refund policy here.

You can find our current shipping policy here.

Sourhouse is a US-based company and we currently ship to Canada from a US-based warehouse. 

No one likes to get asked for money at their doorstep so we now offer a Duties Paid Shipping option to Canada via Passport Shipping.

Learn more about international duties and taxes in our shipping policy which is linked on our product pages and in the footer of every page.

You can also review it here: https://sourhouse.co/policies/shipping-policy