Hydration ratios. Starter genealogies. Flour protein percentages and the way the kitchen smells at 4 a.m. when something is finally rising. Bakers have always kept notebooks. This one's just a little easier to share.
Some families pass down jewelry. Mine passes down recipes — and memories. For as long as I can remember, cooking has been the thread running through all of it. My grandfather's pierogi, made every year like clockwork, so good it felt almost rude to talk about anything else at the table. My mother trying out a new recipe and quietly blowing the minds of everyone in the room. The endless restaurants, the wild world of food. This is what I live for — not just because I need it, but because nothing, not once, has ever failed to bring people together the way a good meal does.
"Every loaf is a reminder."
When I got into sourdough, my mother was the first person I called. Of course she was. She's the one who got me into it in the first place.
Cooking is the language we kept speaking when life got busy. I'd send her a voice note about a gummy crumb at 11 p.m.; she'd send back a photo of her starter at 7 a.m. We have made each other better bakers. More to the point, we have made each other.
This site is what those phone calls would look like if we wrote them down. Yes, it's a database — pH and hydration and protein percentages and all the obsessive bits we love. But it's also a place to keep track of who taught us what. A place where every recipe has a person attached to it.
I built it with her in mind. And for everyone who has ever shared a recipe with someone they love.
Six rungs from no starter to no recipe. Each one adds exactly one thing to the last, which is the only way any of this actually sticks.
Flour, water, and about two weeks of doing almost nothing. Everything on this site is downstream of this one step, and it is the step most people skip and then wonder why nothing rises.
Start one from scratch →Read first Starter School — all eight guides
70% hydration, a single white flour, and a long cold retard. Deliberately the least interesting loaf we know how to describe — because when it fails you can tell exactly what failed.
The Calibration Loaf →Read first White bread flour · Cold retard
Every other step is mechanical. This one is judgement, and it is the difference between a baker and someone following a recipe. Bake step 02 two or three times until you can call it without the clock.
Reading the bulk →Read first Underproofed · Overproofed
A three-flour blend at 72% and a levain built on the side rather than scooped from the jar. Maurizio Leo's beginner recipe is the cleanest version of this rung we have read, so we are sending you to it rather than rewriting it.
Beginner's Sourdough Bread by Maurizio Leo, The Perfect Loaf ↗Read first Whole wheat · Rye · Feeding and ratios
At 80% the dough stops cooperating — coil folds replace stretch and folds, and shaping becomes the hard part. The baker who publishes this recipe says plainly that it gets brutal past that mark, which is exactly why it is worth trying once you can read a bulk.
High Hydration Sourdough Bread by Maurizio Leo, The Perfect Loaf ↗Read first Coil folds · Shaping · Plan the timings
Once you can read a dough, the useful move is to change one thing on purpose and find out what it does. Put in whatever you actually have — any blend, beer instead of water, a handful of walnuts — and it works out the hydration and tells you what that combination will do.
Choose Your Own Crumb →Read first The whole recipe library · Trouble Atlas
Two of these rungs point at other people's recipes, and that is deliberate. We have not baked them, so we are not going to rewrite them and pretend we have — we would rather send you to the baker who did it properly and tell you what to read here first. Our own recipes live here.
Documented sourdough cultures — their origins, characters, and the people who kept them alive. Not recipes. Something better.
Want to make one instead of read about one? Starter School takes you from flour and water to a culture you can bake with.
Drawn from community bake logs, temperature research, and sourdough science. See sources below.
| temp | duration | notes |
|---|---|---|
| 18°C / 64°F | 8h 30m | slow & complex |
| 20°C / 68°F | 6h 15m | balanced |
| 22°C / 72°F | 5h 00m | balanced |
| 24°C / 75°F | 4h 15m | just right |
| 26°C / 79°F | 3h 30m | watch closely |
| 28°C / 82°F | 2h 50m | fast / risky |
| 30°C / 86°F | 2h 15m | too hot — slow it down |
Everything I've baked with, plus everything you've sent me. 312 mills. 87 grain varieties.
| variety | mill / region | protein | ash | best for | my notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 65 (T65) |
Moulin Bourgeois Verdelot, FR |
11.8% | 0.65% | country loaves | favorite | |
| Tipo 00 Manitoba |
Mulino Marino Cossano, IT |
14.5% | 0.55% | high-hydration | in stock | |
| Bread Flour, Sifted |
Cairnspring Mills Burlington, WA |
13.0% | 0.58% | open crumb | mom approved | |
| Whole Spelt | Roggenkampe Detmold, DE |
12.5% | 1.85% | blends, levain | in stock | |
| Dark Rye, Stoneground |
Hayden Mills Queen Creek, AZ |
10.5% | 1.95% | pumpernickel | in stock | |
| Einkorn, Whole | Janie's Mill Ashkum, IL |
14.0% | 1.70% | heritage loaves | limited | |
| High-Extraction Yecora |
Central Milling Logan, UT |
13.5% | 0.95% | country, baguette | in stock | |
| Khorasan (Kamut®) |
Big Sky Organic Bozeman, MT |
14.2% | 1.65% | golden crumb | in stock |
Calculators, planners, and little fixes — built because we needed them ourselves.
Type in your flour weight, get a full breakdown — water, salt, levain, multi-flour blends. The math your grandma did in her head.
open it → 02Tell us when you want bread out of the oven. We'll work backwards through retard, shape, bulk, and feed times based on your kitchen temp.
plan a bake → 03312 documented loaf failures with cause and cure. Search by symptom — dense crumb, no spring, sour smell, blistered crust, gummy interior.
browse atlas → 04Match your crumb to an illustrated reference. Find out what went wrong, why it happened, and how to fix it on the next bake.
analyze your crumb →Photos, weights, temps, notes. Watch your starter's behavior change with the seasons. Export to CSV. Compare against the community.
coming soonPut in whatever you actually have — any blend of flours, beer instead of water, a handful of walnuts — and it works out the hydration and tells you what that combination will do on the bench.
build a recipe →Essays, methods, profiles. Things bakers wanted to write down.
She mailed me her starter before I even asked. Tucked in a small bag of flour and a text that said feed it the second you open it. This is the story of my grandfather's unwritten recipes, my mother's kitchen, and the best grilled cheese I've ever eaten.
Maurizio Leo publishes a sourdough at 80% hydration. Trevor Wilson says telling a new baker to add water is usually the wrong advice. Both are right — about different questions.
On hyperfocus, inconsistent feeding schedules, leaving your starter in the fridge for months, and why sourdough is the one thing that hasn't let go.
A heritage hard red wheat from California's Central Valley — protein high, gluten quirky, oven spring stunning.
The tools, flour, and books worth actually buying — with honest notes on what matters and what doesn't.
browse the pantry →