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Your first sourdough loaf starts before mixing day
A practical reading path: choose a recipe, check your starter, plan the stages, and keep useful notes.
THE SOURDOUGH REFERENCE
Find your next sourdough guide
Search a question or choose the stage you are working on. Formula and ingredient explanations are also available in a separate library.
46 guides
Starter guides
A calmer guide to your sourdough starter
Understand feeding ratios, observe a rise-and-fall cycle, and separate starter activity from safety.
Starter guides
Build a starter routine around your baking week
A maintenance checklist for an established starter, with practical notes on storage, feeding, and preparing to bake.
Troubleshooting
Sticky sourdough: find the cause before adding flour
Distinguish freshly mixed dough from a handling problem, excess water, or dough that has lost strength.
Troubleshooting
Gummy sourdough: check cooling, baking, then fermentation
Use the loaf’s history—not a single crumb photo—to narrow down a wet or gummy interior.
Baking guides
Bulk fermentation: watch the dough, keep the clock
Know where bulk begins and ends, which observations to record, and why a universal time table cannot judge readiness.
Baking guides
Sourdough hydration, with the starter included
See the flour-and-water arithmetic and calculate total hydration without hiding the assumptions.
Baking guides
Autolyse: what the flour-and-water rest can do
Understand the purpose of a rest before adding one to your recipe.
Starter guides
Levain: build the amount your recipe needs
Separate feeding arithmetic from the question of ripeness.
Baking guides
Mixing sourdough: keep the formula intact
A mixing checklist that does not invent a new recipe.
Baking guides
Shaping and scoring: two different jobs
Build a supported shape, then give expansion a place to go.
Baking guides
Final proofing: combine the clues
Use expansion, feel and the recipe together; do not ask one poke to decide everything.
Baking guides
Dough temperature: measure the dough, not just the room
A repeatable way to interpret faster and slower fermentation.
Baking guides
Steam for bread: use an equipment-safe method
Keep the early crust flexible without improvising around hot glass, metal or heating elements.
Baking guides
Baking temperature: a recipe setting, not a universal answer
Match the temperature and bake stages to the loaf and equipment.
Troubleshooting
A starter that is not rising: check before changing
Distinguish a young culture, a missed peak and an established starter that has slowed down.
Starter guides
Starter discard: quantities, use and limits
Understand what is removed at feeding time and when it belongs in a recipe.
Starter guides
Storing a starter: maintenance and backup are different
Choose a documented storage method and allow time to restore activity.
Baking guides
Choosing flour for sourdough
Compare grain, extraction and the formula before comparing brand claims.
Troubleshooting
Dense sourdough: reconstruct the bake
A tight crumb is an outcome, not a diagnosis.
Troubleshooting
Poor oven spring: inspect what happened before baking
Expansion depends on dough condition as well as heat, steam and scoring.
Troubleshooting
Why a loaf spreads sideways
Separate a soft formula from a dough that has lost strength.
Baking guides
Same-day sourdough: plan around the dough
A same-day schedule requires a suitable recipe and an already-established starter.
Baking guides
Tangier or milder bread: compare the whole method
Sourness reflects interacting ingredients and fermentation choices.
Tortillas & masa
Masa harina: what to look for on the bag
A practical ingredient guide for the tortilla section.
Tortillas & masa
Types of masa harina: compare the product, not the promise
Color, grind and intended use answer different questions.
Tortillas & masa
Hydrating masa harina: make a small, measured adjustment
Use the product’s method, then examine a test tortilla.
Tortillas & masa
Using masa harina for pupusas
Choose a complete stuffed-flatbread method, including its filling instructions.
Tortillas & masa
From sourdough to tortillas: what transfers and what does not
Bring the habit of observation, not an assumption that the dough works the same way.
Sourdough science
Is sourdough healthier? Ask what was compared
Separate fermentation chemistry from evidence about people.
Sourdough science
What fermentation changes—and what it does not prove
A guide to reading claims about fermented bread.
Sourdough science
Phytase in sourdough: the mechanism and its limits
Lower phytate in a test is not a blanket mineral-absorption promise.
Sourdough science
Proteolysis: protein breakdown in dough
A process that changes dough is not automatically a health benefit.
Sourdough science
Yeasts and bacteria in a sourdough starter
A starter is a changing microbial community, not one universal yeast.
Bread history
Leavening in colonial kitchens: avoid a single story
One period recipe is evidence for that recipe, not every household.
Bread history
Indigenous food traditions: name the community and process
Do not turn diverse maize traditions into one invented sourdough origin story.
Tortillas & masa
Nixtamalization: what it is and how to study it
Alkaline maize processing, distinct from fermentation.
Bread history
Ancient bread: evidence is not an invention story
Bread-like remains, leavening and sourdough are related but distinct claims.
Bread history
Gold-rush sourdough: keep California and the Klondike separate
Similar stories from different places cannot be exchanged without evidence.
Bread history
Comparing bread traditions without flattening them
Name the product, ingredients and leavening method.
Bread history
Sourdough in Britain: what the available evidence can say
Separate a breadmaking milestone from claims about a market boom.
Arithmetic reference
Starter feeding calculator: quantities, not peak times
Scale a starter : flour : water ratio by weight.
Arithmetic reference
Scale a dough formula by weight
Apply one multiplier to every ingredient in a simple four-ingredient dough.
Arithmetic reference
Convert oven temperature and weight
Exact unit arithmetic without pretending that every cup of flour weighs the same.
Baking guides
Fermentation planning: replace a predicted hour with observations
Temperature is one input, not a complete fermentation model.
Baking guides
A bake-planning checklist
Plan availability around a complete recipe instead of an exact predicted finish.
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