Breadwinner Starts Pre-Sales of Its Sourdough Starter Monitoring Tool
If you thought sourdough mania ended when the pandemic ended, it’s worth scanning social media to see that nothing could be further from the truth. Groups and lists on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram abound with topics as varied as “Sourdough Starters – Sourdough Support Group,” “Sourdough Geeks,” and “Sourdough Bread Bakers India.”
Sourdough is about community; no one knows that better than Fred Benenson, the man behind the Breadwinner, a sensor-driven tool that helps home bakers manage their sourdough starters. Breadwinner, the high-tech pot lid, is launching its crowdfunding campaign today, hoping to hit $35,000 in pledges. This new entry into the crowdfunding arena is a data drive device that uses battery-powered sensors to measure the launcher’s height and temperature; Breadwinner and its accompanying app sync easily to the cloud to record the starter’s behavior within 36 hours. The crowdfunding campaign even includes an add-on option where Benenson and company will send you Benenson’s Breadberry starter.
Once your starter has reached its maximum fermentation, Breadwinner lets you know it’s time to start making your dough and gives you an accurate estimate of how long it took (eg, “Your starter took 9 hours and 32 minutes to reach its peak.”)
Benenson’s interest in sourdough blossomed when he attended a cooking class taught by a guy who had a “Ph.D. in yeast biology.” It was a learning curve for a tech veteran from 2010 when his journey began on the best aspects of working with a startup. After focusing on his career at Kickstarter, Benenson took a break from most of 2018 and 2019 and entered the world of social media sourdough. Marked when he heard that people were naming their first cultures, Benenson was ready to make an impact in the space.
“It was really a mystery when it behaved and when it didn’t,” Benenson told Spoon in a recent interview. “I knew if I kept at it, (the starter) was going to be in shape.” Using her refined data skills, she created a spreadsheet to help her track her starter’s behavior and learn the ideal baking time.
The success with the first Breadwinner prototype led to some positive feedback that encouraged Benenson to enlist the help of some hardware experts and build a product that he brought to market on Kickstarter.
“I thought, okay, if I can make (the first version) work, and people will spend $150 on it, there’s a market here,” Benenson said. “I thought I’d sell a dozen, which would have been a successful beta. But we ended up selling thirty or four of them, got great scripts, got on people’s radar. And I was like, oh, okay. This is it, there’s enough of a market to take it to the next level.”
While other products manage or simplify the manipulation of sourdough starters, Benenson knew that building a community around his Breadwinner would give you the edge. The role of the Breadwinner community is for users to share recipes, give each other tips and tricks, and even if needed, offer technical support.
“There are several reasons why I decided to start with the community,” he explained. “First of all it’s kind of my feeling, and I spent a lot of time in that kind of open source and Wikipedia and Creative Commons world before I worked at Kickstarter. And when I worked at Kickstarter, I think one of the defining characteristics of running Kickstarter projects is that you get a great community at the end of it. And those people follow you, and if you treat them well, and if you treat them well, and if you treat them well, and if you treat them well, if you treat them well. health.”
You can check out the Breadwinner crowdfunding campaign here.
