Sam Whitaker Sam Whitaker · June 10, 2026
Don’t trust your kitchen’s ambient temperature to babysit a sourdough proof — it will wreck a loaf right when you can least afford it. I learned that the hard way one March Tuesday, staring down at what should’ve been a tall, puffy round and instead getting a squat, barely-risen brick. Third failed bake in two … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 9, 2026
Picture the photo I could pull up on my phone right now: a marble slab smeared with pale streaks of dough, flour dust hanging in the air like it had just snowed indoors, and a look on my face somewhere between panic and defeat. That image is proof of exactly one thing—my three-day sourdough project … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 7, 2026
“Why does your bread look like it exploded instead of split open?” My husband asked, nodding at the loaf I’d just pulled from the oven—one I’d babied through a two-day cold proof, then ruined in the space of a single dull swipe with a paring knife that dragged and caught instead of gliding through the … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 6, 2026
My hands are dusted with flour and flecks of rosemary as I slide this latest sheet of crackers out of the oven, the edges just turning that deep gold at 350°F. Rosemary and sea salt is the flavor I always reach for first — it’s the recipe I hand guests before anything else, because it … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 5, 2026
Cheese doesn’t just add flavor to a cracker dough — that’s the myth that trips up nearly every home baker’s first attempt, mine included. When I first tried building sourdough cheese crackers to mimic the boxed ones I grew up snacking on, I blew past the target entirely: what came out of my oven was … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 3, 2026
325°F. That’s the temperature I bake almost every seeded batch at, a full 25 degrees below what works fine for a plain sourdough cracker — and that one number is the difference between seeds that toast beautifully and seeds that turn bitter and black before the dough even finishes crisping. Seeded crackers have always vanished … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 2, 2026
Why do your sourdough crackers bend instead of snapping cleanly in half? Nine times out of ten, it traces back to one of a handful of fixable habits — and I’ve made every single one of these mistakes myself. Across 11 years of sourdough baking, including a stretch running a small home microbakery where I … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 1, 2026
Early on — maybe four or five years into keeping a starter going — I used to scrape half a jar of discard straight into the trash most Sunday mornings, convinced there was nothing worth doing with it. That habit ended the day crackers entered my rotation, and now that same jar of discard is … Read more
Sam Whitaker · May 30, 2026
Half the sourdough advice floating around says a quick rinse and air-dry is all a Dutch oven ever needs; the other half insists you must re-oil it like a cast iron skillet after every single bake. The air-dry camp is dead wrong, and I found that out the hard way the morning I pulled my … Read more
Sam Whitaker · May 29, 2026
A stretch of ninety-degree afternoons had turned my kitchen into a furnace last summer, and it was during that swelter that I finally understood what my equipment had been quietly telling me for years. A loaf came out of that oven looking flawless — deep golden crust, a proud ear, all the visual cues of … Read more
