Sam Whitaker · July 24, 2026
I can still picture the crumb shot from my very first tray of sourdough English muffins — golden and even on the outside, but when I tore one open, it was tight, pale, and almost bready inside, with nothing resembling a hole for butter to soak into. What that flat, close crumb told me was … Read more
Sam Whitaker · July 15, 2026
Most home bakers assume a sourdough bagel is basically your everyday loaf dough, pinched into a ring and dunked in hot water for good measure — and that assumption is exactly what sank my earliest attempts. My first pot of boiled dough came out looking the part, then baked up into dense little rolls with … Read more
Sam Whitaker · June 24, 2026
Lower hydration doesn’t mean lower quality — it means a dough that actually behaves the way a beginner needs it to while you’re still learning to read fermentation by feel. Why Start With Lower Hydration? High-hydration dough is sticky, hard to shape, and unforgiving of small mistakes. A 65% hydration dough, by contrast, holds its … Read more
Sam Whitaker · May 21, 2026
For the longest time, my sourdough loaves looked embarrassing on top. The crumb was decent. The flavor was there. But every time I scored the dough, the blade dragged, the cuts blew out sideways, and my carefully shaped boule ended…
Sam Whitaker · May 7, 2026
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……
Sam Whitaker · May 5, 2026
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,…
Sam Whitaker · May 1, 2026
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…
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 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 · February 14, 2026
Ninety seconds. That’s the entire time investment standing between a loaf that holds its shape and one that spreads into a sad, sagging puddle on the parchment. Late one Tuesday, clock ticking toward 11pm, I found myself staring at a loaf so flat it looked more like something off an IHOP menu than something pulled … Read more
