About Frontiersman Sourdough

Purpose : To fund environmental conservation, food security, public health, and small business growth in Alaska through the sale of handmade and sustainable sourdough starter and baking tools.

Frontiersman Sourdough:

Frontiersman Sourdough starter was first stocked in Anchorage shops in 2019. Our starter has since become a gift and pantry staple for locals and tourists alike. Frontiersman Sourdough has grown to supply small businesses across the country, emphasizing our commitment to environmental and social sustainability:

Responsible Ingredient Sourcing: We use only organic ingredients in our starter and organic cotton in our textiles. As much as possible we source locally.

We are a zero waste company: 100% of our packaging materials are biodegradable, down to the shipping labels and tape.

Small Business Partnerships: We are committed to working with only other small business, not big box stores or Amazon.

Significant charitable contributions: We’ve donated more than 10% of our profits to Alaskan environmental conservation, fishing and hunting educational programs, and farm-land trusts, including but not limited to: Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center; Outdoor Heritage Foundation; Alaska Farmland Trust, WWF; and Nature Conservancy

Handmade quality and scientific quality control: We ensure your starter and tools will last for generations. Our starter and woodcrafts are made by hand and undergo strict, defineable quality control measures. We regularly activate and stress-test our starter to ensure dependability; we collect temperature and humidity data of our starter every 10 seconds to ensure ideal production environments, and we perform 3 separate quality control reviews on our woodcrafts and proofing baskets before they go to market.

Customer Support: We provide customer support. Customers from across the country reach out to us with sourdough questions - we’re happy to answer.

Our Sourdough Starter:

Our sourdough starter is cultivated in Alaska, shelf stable, made with 100% organic ingredients, and packaged in biodegradable pouches.

The stable nature of our yeast allows you to activate your starter and begin working with sourdough at your convenience; next week or years from now. When you activate your Frontiersman Sourdough Starter, you are waking up the same microbes that we use every day, ensuring that you are baking with an active, healthy, and effective starter.

Sourdough History in Alaska:

The early ‘frontiersmen’ that came to Alaska maintained a sourdough starter to leaven their bread. Frontiersmen in Alaska would wear a pouch of starter around their neck to keep it from freezing in the cold Alaskan winter nights. Today, old, grizzled Alaskans are known as “Sourdoughs” in homage to the prospectors, miners, and trappers that explored Alaska.

Our sourdough starter can remain in it’s dormant shelf-stable state for years. Alaskan frontiersman would use sourdough starter to fill gaps in their log cabins. Folks in present day Alaska have collected some of this dormant sourdough starter and made bread with it! The most impressive example of baking with dormant yeast comes from archeologists in 2019 baking a loaf of bread with sourdough collected from ancient Egyptian pottery. The oldest known sourdough was scraped from Ancient Egyptian pottery, reaching back ~5,500 years.

Charitable Giving

A portion of all profits are donated to environmental conservation in Alaska, including. In fact, we’ve donated more than 10% of our profits to environmental conservation, fishing and hunting educational programs, and farm-land trusts, including but not limited to: Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center; Outdoor Heritage Foundation; Alaska Farmland Trust, WWF; and Nature Conservancy

Together we can protect Alaska’s awe inspiring landscape of mountains, glaciers, rivers, seas, forests, tundra, and rich wildlife that are all invaluable.

Sustainable Products and Packaging

All of our shipping and packaging materials are all biodegradable

Our Artisanal Alaskan Sourdough is made with 100% organic ingredients and packaged in biodegradable pouches.

Our Woodcrafts are made of sustainably sourced woods by local artisans in Alaska

Our Tea Towels and Aprons are made of 100% organic and fair trade certified materials in partnership with a B-Corp.

Our Bannetons are made of sustainably harvested spruce wood

Our Hoodies are made of 100% organic cotton.

We operate in Anchorage, AK , the ancestral homeland of the Dena'ina peoples.

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