Guides

Hydration

The Flour Hydration Ceiling

Why an 80% mix turns into a sticky puddle — true hydration, flour ceilings, and how to walk it back.

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Fermentation

Bulk Fermentation by Temperature and Starter

Warm kitchen, fast bulk. Cold kitchen, slow bulk. Read your hours from dough temp and starter amount — then hit your dough temp with the right water.

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Diagnosis

Reading Your Sourdough Crumb

Dense, gummy, or caves under the crust? Your crumb is telling you exactly what happened. Read it, then change one thing.

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Levain

Feeding Your Starter: Ratios and Peak Timing

Want your levain ready at 9 a.m., not 2 a.m.? Pick the feeding ratio and room temp that land the peak at mix time — and build exactly what you need.

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Mix

Autolyse vs. Fermentolyse: When to Rest (and When to Skip)

Rest flour and water first, add the starter to the rest, or skip it entirely? It depends on your flour. Here's when a rest helps — and when it melts your dough.

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Pizza

Pizza Dough Hydration: 60% vs 70% vs 80%

60% for the sheet pan, 70% for the steel, 80% only if the oven can cash the check. Match the water to the heat you own.

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Bagels

Bagel Dough: Mix, Shape, Boil

55–58% hydration, a boil you don't skip, and a hole that looks too big. Dense crumb and shiny crust, on purpose.

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Enriched

Enriched Doughs and Fermentation

Fat and sugar slow the yeast and lie about the proof. Mix gluten first, run warmer, and read a 60% rise instead of a double.

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Preferment

Poolish, Biga, and Levain

Three preferments, three jobs: poolish for stretch, biga for strength, levain for tang. Ratios, clocks, and which one your bake actually needs.

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Scoring

Scoring for an Open Ear

The ear comes from proof, blade angle, and depth — in that order. 30°, 10 mm deep, one motion, cold dough.

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Schedule

Sourdough Around a Work Week

Three timed schedules so fermentation happens while you're at work. The fridge is the pause button; room temp is not.

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Temperature

Desired Dough Temperature Calculator

Room temperature is not dough temperature. The water-temp formula — from flour, room, starter, and friction.

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Cold Proof

Cold Proof Sourdough How Long

The fridge is the pause button, not a stop. 12h vs 24h vs 36h — flavor against structure.

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Formula

Baker's Percentage Chart

Flour is 100%. Everything else hangs off it. True hydration vs. bowl hydration, worked by hand.

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Pricing

Costing Is Not Pricing

Ingredients are the smallest slice of the cost. Labor, overhead, waste, packaging — then a price with the profit already in it.

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Focaccia

Focaccia Hydration Percentage

80% hydration feels impossible until the pan does the structural work. Dimple without degassing.

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Bulk

How to Tell When Bulk Fermentation Is Done

The clock is a window. The dough is the decision. Jiggle, dome, edge bubbles, aliquot jar.

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Discard

What to Do with Sourdough Discard

Discard is your starter, unfed — flavor and tenderness, not a workforce. Three good uses, one to stop.

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Pizza

Detroit-Style Pizza Dough

72% hydration the pan forgives. Pan weight, not ball weight — plus when to par-bake and why the sauce goes last.

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Bake

Baking Sourdough Without a Dutch Oven

Steam is the job, the pot is one way to do it. Lava rocks, spray, and roasters — and what each one costs you.

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Pizza

Pizza Dough Ball Weight Chart

Ball weight is crust thickness. The 12-inch band, area-scaled rows, and why the scale beats the bench knife.

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Whole Grain

Whole Wheat Sourdough Adjustments

Bran cuts gluten and drinks water. Higher hydration, a short rest, shorter bulk — and what stays the same.

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Schedule

Same-Day Sourdough

Compress the two-day loaf: warm dough, ripe starter, shorter bulk. What you trade, what you keep.

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Levain

Make a Sourdough Starter from Scratch

Flour, water, and time — including the day-3 false rise and the day-5 stall nobody warns about.

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