Sam Whitaker Sam Whitaker · April 13, 2026
For the first two years I baked sourdough, I only baked on weekends. That was the conventional wisdom — start your levain Friday night, mix Saturday morning, bake Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Clean, contained, no pressure. And honestly, it works…
Sam Whitaker · April 12, 2026
For the first two years I baked sourdough seriously, every loaf I cut open looked the same: a tight, uniform crumb that tasted fine but told me nothing had really worked. I was following the right hydration numbers, using the…
Sam Whitaker · April 10, 2026
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…
Sam Whitaker · April 9, 2026
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…
Sam Whitaker · April 8, 2026
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….
Sam Whitaker · April 6, 2026
Somewhere around year four of baking sourdough, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I hauled a loaf out of the oven, set it proudly on the cutting board, and hollered for my husband to come admire my work. He studied it for a second, then studied me, then said—kindly, but not kindly enough—”Babe… it’s pale.” He … Read more
Sam Whitaker · April 5, 2026
Somewhere out there, one baking blog will swear whole grain sourdough is the single healthiest thing you can pull out of your oven, while another insists whole grain locks up half your minerals before your gut ever gets a shot at them — and one of those claims is flatly wrong. I found this out … Read more
Sam Whitaker · April 4, 2026
A brutal, un-air-conditioned July heat wave had turned my kitchen into a rogue proofing box, and that’s the backdrop for the Saturday morning I stood there holding two loaves that looked like twins, fully convinced I’d wrecked them both. My shirt was dusted in flour, my coffee had gone stone cold on the counter, and … Read more
Sam Whitaker · April 2, 2026
No recipe card on the internet will warn you that your starter has a number attached to it — a real, measurable number that predicts whether your loaf ends up tasting complex or like something peeled off a locker room floor. Mine certainly didn’t warn me, which is how I ended up handing my mother-in-law … Read more
Sam Whitaker · April 1, 2026
The dough sat there on my counter, flat as a pancake and weeping a thin film of liquid across the top, giving off a sour-but-wrong smell — sharper than the usual tang, almost tipped over from ripe into rotten. It was pushing 11 on a Sunday night, two full days of careful tending headed straight … Read more
