James Whitmore 
For months, my baguettes looked like sad, deflated hot dog buns. I’d follow every step of the process carefully — the autolyse, the folds, the shaping. Then I’d line them up on a floured tea towel, and somehow they’d just……
For months, I stared at gorgeous sourdough loaves on Instagram and felt genuinely defeated. My bread tasted wonderful. However, the tops looked like something a nervous raccoon had scratched. I’d been using sourdough scoring stencils decorative bread tutorials as inspiration,…
Last winter, my sourdough starter turned into a sluggish, barely-bubbling mess. I live in a drafty older home, and my kitchen sits at around 64°F from November through March. No matter what I tried — longer bulk ferments, more frequent…
If you have been baking sourdough for any length of time, you already know how much flour matters. I spent nearly eight months chasing better oven spring and a more open crumb before I finally stopped blaming my starter. This…
For the first two years of my sourdough journey, I used a cheap plastic scraper I grabbed from a dollar store. It warped after three months, slipped constantly on my wooden board, and left bits of dough stuck to the…
For the longest time, my bulk ferment was a complete guessing game. I was using a random ceramic mixing bowl covered with plastic wrap, and I had absolutely no idea how much my dough had risen. Every bake felt like…
For months, I baked sourdough in a hand-me-down enameled Dutch oven. The results were fine — decent ear, decent crust — but I kept seeing stunning open crumb shots online. People credited their baking vessel. That sent me deep into…
For years, I grabbed whatever salt was closest on my pantry shelf when baking sourdough. Diamond Crystal kosher salt was my default — it was cheap, familiar, and always available. But after a few months of reading about Celtic sea…
Six months into my sourdough journey, I was still getting flat, dense loaves with no structure. My dough kept spreading sideways during the final proof instead of building upward. A friend suggested I needed a proper banneton basket, so I…
For months, my malted barley flour sourdough bread attempts were producing loaves that tasted great but looked embarrassingly pale. The crust had no color, no crackle, and zero of that deep amber shine I kept seeing in bakery photos. Every…
