A smaller sourdough crock for smaller starters
Less is more.
Date
August 25, 2025
My favorite sourdough bread recipe only calls for 3 tablespoons of starter.
Which means that I keep a very small starter. So most sourdough crocks — our amazing options included! — have a larger capacity than I need. (That doesn’t mean I don’t put them to work in my kitchen: I’ve found this Glass Sourdough Crock is an excellent storage vessel for granulated sugar.)
We heard this same feedback from lots of our customers, so we created the Petite Sourdough Crock.
This new sourdough starter container takes everything great about our standard-sized containers and shrinks it to a 1-quart capacity. It has clear, straight sides you can easily keep track of your starter’s progress, as well as 1/4" measurements so you can determine when it's ready for use or needs a feeding. Plus, the stainless-steel lid fits loosely to allow gases to escape, creating the ideal environment for fermentation. (One thing to note: Because of this container’s small size, its opening is only about 3" wide. It comes with a mini spatula perfectly sized for stirring your starter directly in the jar, or you can measure and mix in a separate bowl then return the starter to the jar when feeding.)
And as a bonus, this smaller crock fits snugly into the Brod & Taylor Sourdough Home. (Actually, two of them fit in there, so you can keep two different starters going, such as a standard wheat flour one and a rye flour one.) One of our favorite sourdough maintenance tools, the Sourdough Home is a temperature-controlled storage space that allows you to bump up the heat to keep your starter moving or cool it down to slow your starter’s growth — in other words, you can manipulate the temperature to boost your starter’s health and control timing to best fit your schedule.
Even if you make sourdough bread that calls for larger amount of starter, you may still be interested in using this mini crock to keep a smaller starter, which results in much less discard to maintain. When it comes time to bake, simply build up your starter with a couple of feedings until you have the amount you need. (To make 1 cup/227g sourdough starter to use in a recipe, see the baker’s tips at the bottom of our Smaller Sourdough Starter recipe page.)
If you’re looking to reduce discard while still baking great sourdough bread, join me in the mini starter life. We’re small but mighty, and now we have a fun-sized crock for all our sourdough storage needs.
Cover photo by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Yekaterina Boytsova.
6 Reviews
Recipe in this post
Tagged:
Filed Under:
Story
