Beginning sourdough bakers can lessen their struggles with Crustello, a Kickstarter from American AI tech company Race Box. It takes the stress out of being a helicopter parent of a sourdough starter kit, by modernizing an ancient baking method.
It can be tricky for the inexperienced baker to cultivate the wild yeasts floating in their environment into a usable sourdough starter, as there are so many variables involved. These include water type, humidity, flour type, temperature, timing of feedings (adding flour to feed the yeast) and even where it is placed in the household.
Crustello is an AI-powered smart sourdough kit with an integrated lid-based sensor system that monitors all the crucial elements essential in fermenting a starter, including volume, temperature and humidity with realtime data analysis to guide the user for consistent results.
The sensor measures dough height with millimeter precision and logs both dough and ambient temperatures, plus it senses humidity inside the two bowls – a starter bowl and a proofing bowl – to optimize fermentation. The rechargeable sensor module provides 60 days of use per charge, and automatic firmware updates are available to improve performance and accuracy.
The Crustello AI-powered app tracks fermentation patterns and phases to predict accurate timing so the baker can set custom alerts based on dough rise percentage, fermentation time, or temperature targets and be alerted when the dough is ready to be shaped, folded or baked.
Monitoring modes include History Analysis, which keeps records of all sourdough sessions with detailed graphs; Data & Comparison, which analyses and compares previous sessions to note variations in techniques; Log Your Feedings, which tracks feeding times and ratios of starter, flour and water; plus Smart Calculator mode, which enables baking accuracy by calculating a recipe based on the flour, water, salt and starter amounts inputted by the baker.
The encrypted data can also be transmitted via Wi-Fi to the cloud, to keep the user’s baking records synced across all their devices or via Bluetooth for local monitoring with minimal battery drain. Approximately 700 hours of off-line storage of recordings are available to log feedings.
If all goes according to plan, a pledge of US$249 will get you a full Crustello kit of your own – it should ship in January. The planned retail price is is $349.
As someone who has struggled with the trials of fermenting a sourdough starter with mold issues before giving up and getting one that was kindly shared with me from another baker, the Crustello something I definitely want to see under my Charlie Brown Christmas tree!
Sources: Kickstarter, Crustello
