James Whitmore 
People ask me all the time whether my starter is “better” because it’s old. My honest answer is: it’s complicated. I started this starter in 2014 from nothing but flour, water, and time. I nursed it through a move, a…
I remember the exact moment I realized I had been sabotaging almost every loaf I baked for the better part of a year. I was standing in my kitchen at 11pm, cutting into what was supposed to be a beautifully…
My first sourdough loaf came out of the oven looking like a deflated frisbee. It was dense, gummy in the middle, and had a crust so pale it looked like it had never seen heat. I had followed a recipe….
I want to tell you about the time I proudly pulled a sourdough loaf out of the oven, set it on the counter, and called my husband in to admire it. He looked at it. He looked at me. He said, very gently, “Babe, it’s… pale.” He was being kind. It looked like bread-shaped anxiety. … Read more
I was standing at my kitchen counter at 11 PM, flour on my nose, a half-eaten slice of my “nutritious” whole wheat sourdough in one hand and my phone in the other, absolutely convinced I had just read something that was going to ruin bread for me forever. The article was about phytic acid sourdough … Read more
I want to tell you about the Saturday morning I stood in my kitchen holding two identical loaves of bread, completely convinced I had ruined both of them. Flour on my shirt, coffee going cold on the counter, my dog staring at me with what I can only describe as concern. This was my grand … Read more
I want to tell you about the day I served my mother-in-law a loaf of sourdough that tasted like a gym bag. Not slightly tangy. Not “rustic.” A full-on, eyes-watering, where-did-you-go-wrong gym bag. She was very polite about it, which somehow made it worse. That loaf was the moment I finally got serious about understanding … Read more
It was 11 PM on a Sunday, and I was standing at my kitchen counter staring at a bowl of dough that looked absolutely, heartbreakingly wrong. Flat. Sticky. Smelling faintly sour but not in the good way. I had spent two days nurturing that loaf, and it was destined for the trash. That was the … Read more
I still cringe when I think about the loaf I proudly slid onto the counter for my in-laws’ first visit. It looked like a deflated football. A sad, pale, gummy deflated football. My mother-in-law, bless her, picked it up, turned it over twice, and said, “Oh, how… rustic.” Reader, it was not rustic. It was … Read more
I want to tell you about the time I confidently skipped autolyse because I was running late for a dinner party, convinced it was one of those steps that “serious bakers overthink.” I mixed everything together at once, shoved the dough in a bowl, and spent the next four hours watching it stay stubbornly dense … Read more
