If you want to start making your own sourdough, start with this DIY tracker

A sourdough starter is far more than just a substitute for store-bought yeast. For Christine Sunu, each starter is a spectacle of life: Feed it water and flour consistently, and it will become a sluggish blob that breathes, bubbles, and grows. Introduce it to a dough, and the starter will proliferate and breathe life into what would otherwise become a flat, dense loaf. Put it in the freezer, and it will hibernate in its dormant state. Ignore it, and it will die.

“It’s a really neat idea that you can have this critter that consistently makes a certain kind of bread and that potentially changes over time and grows with you,” Sunu, the designer and inventor of sourd.io — a data tracker that monitors a starter’s rise, ambient temperature, and ambient humidity in real time — told me during a recent phone call.  Read more...