Asheville, North Carolina · Est. 2022 · Founded by Erik Fabian & Jennifer Yoko Olson
Erik Fabian was a stay-at-home dad during the pandemic, scheduling Zoom calls around nap times, when he started reaching out to his friend Jenny Olson -- an industrial designer -- to talk through a product idea he couldn't shake. Every sourdough baker had the same problem: keeping the starter at the right temperature was fussy and inconsistent. Two years of nights and weekends later, Goldie was born. A warm, safe, beautiful home for your sourdough starter. The biggest advancement in sourdough baking since the Dutch oven.
Erik Fabian had built brand teams at Moleskine and Greenhouse Software before he stepped back during the pandemic to be a stay-at-home dad. Caring for a newborn and homeschooling his son, he started calling friends -- including Jennifer Yoko Olson, an industrial designer -- just to have adult conversation. They started talking about a problem Erik had been wrestling with as a home baker: sourdough starter is fussy. Temperature matters enormously. Most kitchens are too cold in winter and too warm in summer, and there was no elegant solution for keeping a starter in its happy place.
Jenny got hooked on sourdough herself in the process of working through the problem. Two years of nights and weekends later -- working around nap times, building over Zoom, staying lean and fully bootstrapped -- they launched Sourhouse in 2022 from Asheville, North Carolina. Their first product was Goldie: a countertop warming station, named after Goldilocks, that keeps sourdough starter at exactly the right temperature using almost no energy. It was called the best advancement in sourdough baking since the Dutch oven. It was featured in Wired, the New York Times, and The Kitchn. Their Kickstarter surpassed $100,000 in funding with over 1,000 baker-backers.
The brand has since given away over 25,000 free sourdough starters and published a community cookbook with over 100,000 downloads worldwide. On a registry, Sourhouse is the gift for the couple who wants to make bread together -- the first kitchen ritual of a new life, slow and warm and worth the wait.
