After used sourdough starter jars wrecked her dishwasher, an Aroostook baker and farm store owner came up with a fix in food-grade silicone containers that she started selling on Friday.

It took Erica Burkhart, co-owner of Burkhart’s of Bulrush Farm and Bulrush Farm Mercantile, several years to create a solution to cleaning the sourdough jars lining her sink after making the bread she sells in her Houlton shop.

The problem: if the residue is rinsed out into the sink or put in the dishwasher, the thick gel-like substance turns into concrete-hard chunks in pipes or dishwashers.

Burkhart, who bakes about 52 loaves — 36 sourdough and 16 challah — a week in her licensed Hodgdon kitchen, was frustrated with cleaning jars caked with dried rock-hard starter.

“Either it turns to concrete in the jars and you have to try and chop it out, or you have to stop everything and wash [the jars] right away when they are like sticky mud. It’s not good for your pipes,” she said. “It’s dreadful for your dishwasher. We had to get ours worked on once or twice.”

Everybody who knows sourdough knows exactly the trauma she’s talking about and many starter jars are plastic and that’s not healthy, Burkhart said.

She usually ends up with a stack of glass or plastic jars on the side of her sink, she said. One day while washing the dishes, she thought there had to be a better solution.

She thought that silicone jars might work because they could be squished together to break up the dried starter. So, Burkhart started Googling and looking for silicone starter jars, but they didn’t exist. There were a handful with silicone lids, but no jars.

“That’s when we went on this adventure and it took years to find something that would work,” she said. “We found a company that makes silicone and branded the jars.”

Hodgdon entrepreneur Erica Burkhart’s new silicone sourdough starter jars are now available in her Houlton farm store, Bulrush Farm Mercantile, just off Market Square. Credit: Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli / The County

The Burkhart’s of Bulrush Farm food-grade Silicone Sourdough Starter Jars have a vented lid, because sourdough has to breathe, Burkhart said. When it rises, the vent is open, and for dormant storage in the refrigerator, the vent is closed, making it airtight again.

Following use, set the jar aside, let it dry in the silicone jar and “just squish the jar and the hard pieces fall right off and can be discarded by composting it, feeding it to your chickens or just throwing it away,” she said.

The new jars launched for sale last Friday at the Houlton Agricultural Fair and drew interest both in person and on social media.

“Over the fair weekend a woman came in with her cash and bag and said, ‘I brought my bag and my cash,’ just for these,” she said. “I’m glad to be able to offer an alternative that also makes life easier.”

The jars come in several colors; white, green, tan, purple and blue. Priced at $24.99 each or two for $45, the prices line up with glass starter jars. Generally, sourdough bakers need two jars: one to let sit and dry, and one to put fresh starter in, Burkhart said.

She is in the process of opening a Shopify online store and when she does, the jars can be shipped. They are currently available on Facebook or at the Bulrush Farm Mercantile, 3 Union Square, Houlton.

“For any bread person this is very valuable,” Burkhart said.