Yeast bread is a tricky thing to get right. But Breadwinner, a new smartphone developed by hardware designers (and bread lovers) Fred Benenson and Sarah Pavis, wants to try to get some of the mystery out of the yeast by offering an app-connected device that can detect the volume and temperature of your starter and notify you when it’s ready to bake, via Laughingly Inktvis.
As you’ve never baked an appetizer before, it’s very different from the yeast you buy in the store. Your starter (mine, if you were curious, has the name Lancelot) should be fed regularly, and it rises and falls during the day as the yeast feeds on the sugars in the flour and bubbles create carbon dioxide – the same bubbles that help you finish sourdough so fluffy and delicious.
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But to find out when using your appetizer after a meal is a difficult balance between art and science. What Breadwinner intends to do is take the guesswork out of the equation by letting you follow the growth of your appetizer after a feeding and letting you know exactly when the point is to mix your dough. It also logs previous feeds so you can track the performance of your starter over time and adjust variables to get the perfect bread.
The Breadwinner unit itself is designed to fit on top of a 16oz Ball Mason pot, and it works by using an infrared sensor to measure the pitch height. It can also take temperature readings from the surrounding air to make sure it’s not too hot (or too cold), and it includes Wi-Fi connection to connect to your smartphone. With a button at the top you can easily log in when you have fed the appetizer.
The current model – which costs $ 140 – is in the middle of a public prototyping phase. Buying a bread winner today is not a final product. The hardware is extremely incomplete and the current version is charged via Micro USB, which I hope to swap to the USB-C for the final product.
Obviously you have to spend a lot on any device, let alone one that is still extremely unfinished and just as limited as this one – but if you’re someone who likes to bake bread, gadgets and data analytics, it can ‘ a pleasure be addition to your kitchen.
The Breadwinner team also plans to use early-user feedback – and the valuable data of the different types of entrees, flour mixes and feed schedules from more users – to further refine the product before a commercially produced version arrives in the future. It may be worth the wait if you prefer a more refined (or cheaper) product. To sweeten the pot, the prototype also has access to a Breadwinner Discord and a $ 50 discount on the final model when it is released.
Breadwinner, however, is not just about the single device. The site is presented as an online community for bread lovers, a self-described ‘social yeast network’ that aims to be a place for bakers to post recipes, share bread photos and get advice from fellow bakers.