Sam Whitaker · August 17, 2026The starter I ran my microbakery with for three years didn’t have a name for the first six months. It just sat on the counter in an old pickle jar, getting fed twice a day, completely anonymous. Then one Tuesday a regular customer asked what I called “the thing that makes the bread,” and I … Read more
Sam Whitaker · August 14, 2026
It was 11pm on a Tuesday, and I was standing in my HDB kitchen staring at a jar of what can only be described as sad, grey, completely lifeless gloop. My third attempt at a sourdough starter in as many weeks. The Singapore heat had either killed it too fast or encouraged the wrong kind … Read more
Mei Lin Koh · July 27, 2026
A note from Sam: every fermentation experiment I’ve ever run has stayed firmly inside Pacific Northwest weather, so when longtime reader Mei Lin Koh offered up her own wild-yeast terroir project from Singapore, I said yes before she’d even finished the sentence — tropical fermentation runs on a clock I’ve simply never had to learn. … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 8, 2025
The Wild Yeast Story Started Long Before San Francisco Nearly every home baker assumes San Francisco sourdough sits at the center of the whole story — that tangy, foggy-city loaf everyone points to first. That assumption doesn’t hold up. Bakers in Ancient Egypt were likely capturing wild yeast thousands of years before California existed as a place, … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 6, 2025
What’s Actually Happening Between Rye and Sourdough Rye doesn’t act like wheat once it hits a mixing bowl, and pretending otherwise is where a lot of German-style bakes go sideways. The proteins in rye simply won’t knit into the stretchy gluten web that wheat proteins build so easily. Try to push it through with plain … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 5, 2025
Two Breads, Two Different Stories Don’t assume Pain au Levain and sourdough are just two names for the same loaf — mixing them up costs you flavor and consistency you’re not expecting to lose. Both breads lean on wild fermentation, sure, but the path each one takes gets you to a noticeably different crumb, crust, … Read more
Sam Whitaker · November 30, 2025
Most of what Australians call “sourdough” at the supermarket isn’t sourdough at all. It’s a regular yeasted loaf with vinegar or citric acid added for tang, sold under a name that implies slow fermentation nobody actually did. I started testing loaves after a reader sent me photos of a “sourdough” ingredient list with baker’s yeast … Read more
Sam Whitaker · November 28, 2025
Eight hours. Sometimes twenty-four. That’s the fermentation window a properly made French sourdough loaf sits through before it ever sees an oven—a stretch of time that would strike most modern shoppers as absurd for something as ordinary as bread. Yet that patience is exactly why the crust shatters the way it does, why the crumb … Read more
Sam Whitaker · November 27, 2025
Introduction: The Living Legacy in Italy’s Bread What’s actually keeping Italian sourdough alive centuries after the recipe could’ve been forgotten? The short answer: a handful of stubborn, carefully guarded starters that Italians never let die out. Long before pizza dough and fresh pasta became the country’s culinary calling cards, there was ancient sourdough — a … Read more
Sam Whitaker · November 23, 2025
Introduction: A Jar of Flour and Water Carries More Than Bubbles We went through a stretch last February where the furnace was running nonstop and the air in my kitchen dropped to something like 20% humidity. My usual starter, the one I’ve fed for over a decade, barely blinked. But a rye culture a reader … Read more
