The Sourdough Sidekick automates the boring bit of baking

Sourdough Sidekick 让酸种面包烘焙中最枯燥的部分实现自动化

Baking sourdough bread is inherently old-fashioned, relying on natural fermentation and wild yeast instead of the simple, predictable commercial stuff. So it might sound anathema to bring a gadget into the mix. 烘焙酸种面包本质上是一种老派的做法，它依赖于自然发酵和野生酵母，而不是简单且可预测的商业酵母。因此，在这一过程中引入电子设备听起来似乎有些格格不入。

The trick to the Sourdough Sidekick — backed and branded by King Arthur flour — is that it promises to automate the boring bit of sourdough baking: starter management. It feeds your starter flour and water on a set schedule, ready for exactly when you want to bake, leaving you to focus on kneading, shaping, and the actual baking. Sourdough Sidekick（由 King Arthur 面粉公司背书并冠名）的诀窍在于，它承诺将酸种烘焙中最枯燥的部分——酵种管理——实现自动化。它会按照设定的时间表为你的酵种添加面粉和水，确保在你想要烘焙的时刻准备就绪，让你能够专注于揉面、整形和实际的烘焙过程。

Like any single-purpose kitchen gadget, you’ll have to be confident you’ll get enough use to justify both the cost and the counter space. That’s doubly true here thanks to a few design quirks that make the Sourdough Sidekick frustrating to use if you don’t bake multiple times a week. 像任何单一用途的厨房小家电一样，你必须确信自己会频繁使用它，以证明其成本和所占用的台面空间是值得的。这一点在这里尤为重要，因为该设备存在一些设计上的小毛病，如果你不是每周烘焙多次，使用起来会感到非常沮丧。

The Sourdough Sidekick is a joint project by FirstBuild — the GE Appliances “innovation hub” responsible for the viral Opal ice maker — and King Arthur Baking Company, which is why you’ll see the latter’s logo on the front. It launched with a crowdfunding campaign in March 2025, but it’s now available to buy directly from King Arthur for $179.99 — though it’s US-only. Sourdough Sidekick 是 FirstBuild（通用家电旗下的“创新中心”，曾推出过风靡网络的 Opal 制冰机）与 King Arthur Baking Company 的合作项目，这就是为什么你在设备正面能看到后者的标志。它于 2025 年 3 月通过众筹活动推出，目前已可以直接从 King Arthur 官网以 179.99 美元的价格购买，但仅限美国地区。

The basic operation is pretty simple. You drop a small amount of existing starter into the crock — 15g, or a tablespoon’s worth — and fill the two dispensers with flour and water. On Auto mode, you then tell the Sidekick when you want to make bread, and how much starter you’ll need for your recipe, and it will drip-feed flour and water on a dynamic schedule that takes into account the local temperature, mixing as it goes, so that you end up with the right amount of starter, at its peak of activity, right when you need it. 其基本操作非常简单。你只需将少量现有的酵种（15克，约一汤匙）放入容器中，并在两个分配器中分别装入面粉和水。在自动模式下，你只需告诉 Sidekick 你打算何时制作面包，以及食谱所需的酵种量，它就会根据当地温度，按照动态时间表滴入面粉和水，并边加边搅拌。这样，当你需要时，就能得到恰好处于活性巅峰状态的酵种。

Using a simple white bread flour, this worked a treat. I told the Sidekick I wanted to bake in a few days’ time, left it alone, and came back to find my starter strong, healthy, and ready to bake a pretty decent white loaf. If anything my bread came out overproofed, suggesting the Sidekick produced a more active starter than I usually manage by myself. 使用普通白面包粉时，效果非常出色。我告诉 Sidekick 我几天后要烘焙，然后就没再管它。回来时，我发现酵种非常强健、健康，足以烤出一个相当不错的白面包。甚至可以说，我的面包发酵过度了，这说明 Sidekick 培育出的酵种比我平时自己手动培育的活性更高。

You don’t have to use white flour, though any time you switch flours, you’ll have to spend a few minutes recalibrating the Sidekick to account for the different densities. It handled most whole wheat and rye flours just fine, though when I tried an especially coarse-milled rye flour from British miller Landrace for a dense Danish式 rye loaf, the resulting starter proved too thick for the Sidekick to mix properly, leaving me with dry clumps and thin patches. The starter needed more water to reach the right texture, but for that I needed to leave the pointedly simple Auto mode. 你不一定要使用白面粉，但每次更换面粉种类时，你都必须花几分钟重新校准 Sidekick，以适应不同的密度。它处理大多数全麦粉和黑麦粉都没问题，但当我尝试使用英国磨坊 Landrace 出产的一种特别粗磨的黑麦粉来制作致密的丹麦式黑麦面包时，产生的酵种对于 Sidekick 来说太稠了，无法充分搅拌，导致出现了干面团块和稀薄区域。酵种需要更多的水才能达到合适的质地，但要做到这一点，我必须退出极其简单的“自动模式”。

Auto mode has a few other limitations. It’s designed to work with exactly 15g of starter to begin with, so you’ll have to weigh that out every time to get the proportions right. More annoyingly, it has odd limits to the minimum amount of starter it’s willing to make. Set a bake day a few days out and it’ll let you produce as little as 150g, but aim for four days or longer and it insists on making at least 400g. That’s far more than I usually use in a single loaf, resulting in much more discard (excess starter you won’t use to bake) than my manual feeding ever creates. 自动模式还有其他一些局限性。它被设计为必须从 15 克的酵种开始，所以你每次都必须称量好以确保比例正确。更令人烦恼的是，它对愿意制作的酵种最少量有限制。如果你将烘焙日期设在几天后，它允许你制作最少 150 克的酵种；但如果设在四天或更久之后，它坚持至少要制作 400 克。这远超我单次烘焙所需的量，导致产生的废弃酵种（烘焙用不完的多余酵种）比我手动喂养时多得多。

There’s no option to set the Sidekick into an Auto maintenance mode. You have to set a bake day, and that has to be within the next week. That’s great if you know you’ll be baking soon and when. But sometimes I just want to keep my starter alive and don’t know for sure when I’ll next need a loaf of bread. In that case, you either have to set an arbitrary target date and let it create some discard, or pull the main crock out of the machine, pop the lid on, and stick the whole thing in the fridge for a few days. Sidekick 没有设置自动维护模式的选项。你必须设定一个烘焙日期，且必须在接下来的一周内。如果你确定自己很快就会烘焙，这很好。但有时我只是想保持酵种的活性，却不确定下次什么时候需要烤面包。在这种情况下，你要么必须设定一个随意的目标日期并产生一些废弃酵种，要么就得把主容器从机器里拿出来，盖上盖子，然后把整个容器放进冰箱冷藏几天。

The Sidekick has two other modes, Ratio and Custom, which are a little more flexible. While Auto feeds your starter with flour and water at a 1:1:1 ratio, Ratio mode gives you a few preset ratios to pick from and lets you set the starter seed amount and the feeding frequency. The odd limitation is that the set ratios only vary the proportion of starter relative to the other ingredients. Ratio mode doesn’t let you add unequal amounts of flour and water to make a starter that’s either thicker or thinner than normal — exactly what I needed for my coarse rye flour. Sidekick 还有另外两种模式：比例模式（Ratio）和自定义模式（Custom），它们稍微灵活一些。自动模式以 1:1:1 的比例喂养酵种，而比例模式提供了一些预设比例供你选择，并允许你设置酵种的初始量和喂养频率。奇怪的限制在于，这些预设比例仅改变酵种相对于其他成分的比例。比例模式不允许你添加不等量的面粉和水来制作比平时更稠或更稀的酵种——而这正是我处理粗黑麦粉时所需要的。

For that you need Custom mode. This lets you set the seed amount, the feeding frequency, and the exact quantities of flour and water you want at each feed. I was able to use it to make a slightly looser starter for my rye, thin enough for the Sidekick to happily mix, and it should be possible to use it to create a custom maintenance mode with micro-feeds. FirstBuild also provides instructions for using Custom to make a starter from scratch — I managed to get a healthy new starter up and running in four days — or rehab one that’s on its last legs. 为此，你需要使用自定义模式。它允许你设置初始量、喂养频率，以及每次喂养时面粉和水的确切数量。我成功利用它为我的黑麦粉制作了一种稍微稀一点的酵种，稀到 Sidekick 可以顺利搅拌。理论上，也可以利用它创建一个带有微量喂养的自定义维护模式。FirstBuild 还提供了使用自定义模式从零开始制作酵种的说明——我成功在四天内培育出了一个健康的酵种——或者用来修复濒临死亡的酵种。