The First Loaf

Every baker remembers their first loaf. Mine was dense, gummy in the middle, and I ate the whole thing anyway.

The crust was good — that much I got right. A hot Dutch oven and enough time in the oven will give you a decent crust almost regardless of what you did before. But the crumb was a brick. Tight, uniform, no holes. Classic underfermentation.

I didn't know that at the time. I thought I'd done something wrong with the shaping, or maybe the flour. I'd followed the recipe exactly — 4 hours of bulk fermentation, just like it said. What I didn't know was that my kitchen was 65°F, not the 75°F the recipe assumed. My dough needed 10 hours, not 4.

That's the thing about bread. The recipe gives you a time. The dough gives you a signal. Learning to read the signal is the whole game.

The second loaf was better. The third was better still. By the fifth I understood what I was doing well enough to stop following recipes and start baking bread.

That's what this site is about.