Sam Whitaker Sam Whitaker · April 26, 2026
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…
Sam Whitaker · April 25, 2026
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…
Sam Whitaker · April 24, 2026
Two years ago, my sourdough loaves were a mess. Every single bake felt like a gamble. I was using measuring cups, eyeballing flour, and wondering why my results were so wildly inconsistent. Then a baker in my local bread group…
Sam Whitaker · April 22, 2026
My sourdough loaves were stuck in a rut. Every weekend I’d pull a boule out of the Dutch oven, and every weekend the ear was either nonexistent or completely blown out on the wrong side. My old single-blade lame —…
Sam Whitaker · April 21, 2026
For the longest time, I baked sourdough by feel. I knocked on the bottom of the loaf, listened for that hollow thump, and hoped for the best. Sometimes it worked. Often, I sliced into a loaf that looked perfect on…
Sam Whitaker · April 20, 2026
I had killed three sourdough starters in two months. Three. Each time, I followed guides, watched videos, and still ended up with a sad, flat jar of flour and water that smelled more like nail polish remover than bread. So…
Sam Whitaker · April 18, 2026
My sourdough starter turned 11 years old this spring. In that time, I’ve neglected it, overfed it, underfed it, accidentally frozen it, left it in the fridge for a month, and once knocked the jar off the counter and watched…
Sam Whitaker · April 17, 2026
The first time I added fruit to sourdough, I threw a handful of fresh blueberries into the dough during bulk fermentation. The result was a loaf with purple streaks, soggy pockets where berries had burst, and a crumb so wet…
Sam Whitaker · April 16, 2026
Shaping was the skill that took me the longest to learn. I could manage fermentation, I could score, I could bake — but for the first year, every loaf came out of the oven looking like it had given up…
Sam Whitaker · April 14, 2026
I didn’t start baking sourdough because I thought it was healthy. I started because I wanted good bread. But after 11 years — including three years running a home microbakery where I was producing 40 to 60 loaves a week…
