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
Sam Whitaker · March 31, 2026
Nearly every home baker starts out assuming that dough basically develops itself — that if you mix flour, water, salt, and starter and just leave it alone long enough, structure shows up on its own. That exact assumption is what wrecked the loaf I proudly set on the counter the first time my in-laws came … Read more
Sam Whitaker · March 30, 2026
There’s a spot on my counter, just to the left of the stove, where my dented steel mixing bowl always lives — and one particular evening it held a dough I’d thrown together in a rush, certain that autolyse was a fussy extra step “real bakers” didn’t need to bother with because I was already … Read more
