Janey Huang

Product Design: DoughCraft
Branding / Product Design / Sustainable Design

2025

DoughCraft is a sustainable homeware project that explores the material afterlife of expired sourdough bread. Through processes of grinding, reforming, and hand-shaping, leftover bread is transformed into biodegradable sculptural objects designed for the domestic environment.  This project emerges from a critical inquiry into food waste and sustainable production practices.

By diverting bakery byproducts from landfill and transforming them into long-lasting forms, DoughCraft proposes an alternative narrative for material life cycles, where perishability and permanence intersect.

The resulting works embrace imperfection, decay, and transformation as aesthetic and conceptual strategies.
Positioned within the context of home decor, they invite reflection on value, material temporality, and environmental responsibility in design.

Research :
While researching how bakeries deal with expired sourdough, I found that many turn leftovers into snacks, offer them through Too Good To Go, or donate them. However, some still throw them away , a wasteful and unsustainable practice. Inspired by a French bakery that grinds old bread into powder and reuses it in fresh loaves, I began exploring how to give expired bread a new purpose. I first experimented with making pendants from bread crumbs， small objects that could be worn or hung as reminders of mindful living. But due to material limitations, I shifted my focus to home decor. The project reimagines sourdough as lasting, biodegradable objects for the home,merging craft, sustainability, and emotional value into everyday space.