Sam Whitaker · December 23, 2025
My oven mitts are still on and I’m staring down at a loaf that’s just come out flat, pale, and honestly closer to a frisbee than any boule I’d want to photograph. The crumb inside is tight and gummy, the crust barely colored at all, and I already know I did the prep right — … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 22, 2025
Here’s a claim that trips up most people new to sourdough: refrigeration doesn’t pause fermentation, it just changes what kind of fermentation you’re getting. I used to believe the fridge was basically a “hold” button — a place to park dough when life got in the way of baking on schedule. Then one Tuesday night, … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 21, 2025
Two tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of water, mixed into a jar and left to sit for eight hours ��� that’s roughly what one single feeding of starter produces in leftover, unfed discard, and multiply that across a week of feedings and you’re staring at a genuinely surprising pile of “waste” building up in … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 19, 2025
Does a sunk spoonful of starter mean your fermentation is broken? Nine times out of ten, no — and that’s worth saying plainly before we dive into the weeds. Years back I hovered over my kitchen sink with a small dollop of starter suspended in a glass of water, treating the outcome like it would … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 18, 2025
Three winters back, on a Tuesday evening after weeks of half-attention, I popped the lid off my starter jar expecting the usual bubbly greeting. Instead — nothing. No dome, no rise, not a single bubble breaking the surface. Just a slack, disappointing slurry of flour and water giving off a sharp whiff of nail polish … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 17, 2025
Scroll through enough recipe blogs and you’ll run into two completely contradictory pieces of advice on the same topic: one camp swears you need a splash of pineapple juice or a few crushed grapes to “jumpstart” a starter, while another insists plain flour and water is all you’ll ever need. The pineapple-juice crowd is wrong … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 14, 2025
Your gut rebels after eating bread. Bloating hits within an hour. Energy crashes before lunch. Sound familiar? Most people blame gluten or assume bread just doesn’t work for their digestion. That’s often where the conversation ends. However, there’s a legitimate middle ground many haven’t tried: properly fermented sourdough. Over 11 years of baking sourdough at … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 12, 2025
Getting the Basics of Sourdough Scoring Right No recipe card walks you through this part: scoring is what turns an ordinary loaf into something people stop and stare at. It means slicing deliberately into the dough’s skin right before it hits the oven, and those slices aren’t just decoration. They also do a job — … Read more
Sam Whitaker · December 10, 2025
Bread Lame, Grignette, or Bare Razor Blade: Which Scoring Tool Is Actually Right for You? The moment that stuck with me was watching a dull blade snag on cold, tacky dough skin instead of gliding through it — a little tear where a clean line should have been, the surface tension bunching up around the … 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
