Sam Whitaker · February 25, 2026
The smell hit me before the sound did — that warm, toasty, almost caramelized aroma filling the kitchen on a random Tuesday night, right as I flipped my very first spelt sourdough loaf out onto the cooling rack. Then came the thud. Not a gentle little tap, but a genuine, dense, wet-sounding thud, the kind … Read more
Sam Whitaker · January 4, 2026
Ask five different bakers when you’re supposed to fold seeds or nuts into sourdough, and you’ll hear five different answers — but two of those answers flatly contradict each other, and only one of them actually holds up under a rolling pin. Some corners of the internet will tell you timing barely matters, that you … Read more
Sam Whitaker · January 3, 2026
A brutal August heat wave turned my kitchen into a proofing box that summer, and the loaf I pulled out afterward had a dense, gummy crumb that clung to the knife like wet clay. I’d followed the recipe exactly, or so I assumed — but I’d nudged the water up without grasping what that change … Read more
Sam Whitaker · January 2, 2026
Most printed recipes will tell you to add 2% salt and move on, but none of them explain what actually goes wrong if you skip it — I found that out the hard way. I was half-listening to a podcast during a bake, running on autopilot, and the salt jar never got opened. Through bulk … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 31, 2025
The jar looked wrong before it smelled wrong — foam crowding up against the underside of the lid, the surface pocked with bubbles bigger than any starter of mine had ever thrown. I’d grabbed the flour tin on autopilot that morning, scooped, fed, and walked away, and it wasn’t until I came back an hour … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 30, 2025
Almost every home baker assumes flour is flour — that any white bag sitting on the pantry shelf will behave the same way once it meets a bubbling starter. I believed exactly that until one Tuesday evening when my starter was doing its thing on the counter and I grabbed the closest bag on hand, … Read more
