Saving Bread
Saving Bread explores sourdough, grain, fermentation, craftsmanship, and the people keeping real bread alive. Join baker and educator Allison White for practical lessons and thoughtful conversations with bakers, millers, farmers, oven makers, and others shaping the future of bread.
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Saving Bread
Interviews E07 Tom Cucuzza of The Sourdough Journey: Bulk Fermentation & Starter Health
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How do you actually know when bulk fermentation is finished? What makes a sourdough starter strong and healthy? And how can understanding the science of fermentation help you become a more intuitive baker?
This week on Saving Bread, Allison White talks with Tom Cucuzza, creator of The Sourdough Journey, about his years of experimentation with sourdough bread, starter health and bulk fermentation.
Tom has built an enormous body of educational work around understanding what is actually happening inside our starters and doughs. In this episode, we get into the details.
We talk about:
- Sourdough starter strength and accumulated acidity
- Why repeatedly underfeeding a starter can create problems over time
- Tom’s peak-to-peak feeding method
- How to recognize when your sourdough starter has reached peak
- How to judge the end of bulk fermentation
- Dough temperature and percentage rise
- Why fermentation does not stop when bulk fermentation ends
- Gluten development and using the windowpane test throughout fermentation
- Pre-shaping, bench rest, shaping and cold retard
- Refrigerator temperature and continued fermentation
- Using pH as one tool rather than a hard-and-fast fermentation endpoint
- How changing one variable at a time can help you learn faster
- Developing baker’s intuition through observation and experimentation
- The relationship between science, precision and creativity in bread baking
Tom describes himself as both analytical and artistic. For him, understanding the science is not the final goal. It gives him more opportunities to create the bread he wants to make.
We also talk about why sourdough should not feel like an exclusive hobby and Tom’s belief that everyone should be able to learn how to make bread.
LEARN MORE FROM TOM CUCZZA + THE SOURDOUGH JOURNEY
The Sourdough Journey website
https://thesourdoughjourney.com/
Instagram: @the_sourdough_journey
https://www.instagram.com/the_sourdough_journey/
The Sourdough Journey on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@thesourdoughjourney
Sourdough videos and Mastering Bulk Fermentation resources
https://thesourdoughjourney.com/videos/
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Instagram: @savingbreadpodcast
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Saving Bread is a podcast about sourdough, bread baking, whole grains, fermentation and the people working to preserve and move bread culture forward. Hosted by Allison White.
Hi friends, welcome back to the Saving Bread Podcast. Today I am talking with Tom Kakuza, the baker and educator behind the sourdough journey. Tom has spent years approaching sourdough through experimentation. He documents his bakes, changes variables, tracks temperature and percentage rise. He studies starter behavior and uses all of that information to better understand what is actually happening inside of the dough. So today we get into some of my favorite subjects. We talk about starter strength and acidity, what peak actually means, how to judge the end of bulk fermentation, what happens to fermentation after you divide and shape your dough, gluten development, refrigerator temperature, pH, and why no single number or test should replace learning how to observe what is in front of you. One of the ideas I loved most from this conversation is Tom's explanation that all of this science isn't really about chasing numbers. It's about giving himself more opportunities to create the bread that he wants to make. This is a very detailed one, and I think there's a lot here for both newer and experienced bakers. I also wanted to let you know that towards the end of the conversation, we talk about pH, which is something that we have not covered quite yet in our lessons episodes. It's very brief at the end, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of context. The higher the pH, the younger the dough, the earlier you are in bulk fermentation. And as the pH starts to come down closer to four, the later you are in fermentation. So when we talk about something that's a higher pH, that's usually earlier in bulk fermentation or right after a feed. And as the pH begins to drop, that's when the starter is starting to peak and become hungry, or your dough might be ready to divide or go into the refrigerator as the pH starts to get lower and lower and get closer to pH four. Don't get too caught up on the numbers. Just think about it in context of younger or more mature dough early in bulk fermentation or later in bulk fermentation. And I promise you, probably within the next two lessons episodes, we'll get much further into pH. But I think again, whether you're a brand new baker or you've been baking for many, many years, you will really enjoy this conversation because we go down quite a few really interesting rabbit holes. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Tom Kakuza of the sourdough journey. I'm Allie White, and this is Saving Bread.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I am Tom Cacuza. I am a sourdough baker, and I am the curator of the sourdough journey.
SPEAKER_00Great. And tell us how you started this whole journey, how you started the sourdough journey.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have to go back to when I was working in the corporate world, I spent 30 years in corporate life. And as I was kind of winding down, I got into cooking and I was interested in baking bread. I knew nothing about sourdough at the time. This was, I'd say, in 2010, 2015. But I got interested in bread baking and I made Jim Leahy's classic no-need recipe from the New York Times, one of the most popular New York Times recipes. And it's not a sourdough loaf, but it kind of emulates sourdough by using commercial yeast. So it does a long, slow fermentation overnight, and then you bake it in a Dutch oven. So it was his attempt at trying to introduce people to kind of a classic artisan loaf without using a sourdough starter. And so I used to make that for holidays. I would I would bake a couple of times a year. And I call that kind of the gateway loaf to sourdough for people who try that because once you do it and you get interested in baking an artisan loaf. Then I went to a bread baking class when I retired in 2019. And still, again, I wasn't really that much knowledgeable, that knowledgeable about sourdough. But I got into the class and one of the other students asked the instructor, they said, Oh, are we going to learn how to make sourdough in this class? And the instructor said, Oh no, that's that's like a science project. It's so complicated. And that like rang my little bell in my mind because I love science and I love things that are complicated. And that kind of started my journey in 2019. I immediately went home from that class. I dug through some old cookbooks, I found a recipe for how to make a sourdough starter. And I started my own starter, I think in October of 2019. And I had kind of mixed results with the first few loaves. And then Christmas of 2019, my wife bought me Chad Robertson's tartine bread, which is still the kind of the Bible that I use to this day. And I was just totally hooked at that time. So I started baking really in earnest in December of 2019. And the way that I typically learn things was I'd go out to YouTube and try to find videos of how to bake sourdough. And a lot of people will find it surprising now. But at that time, there were literally no kind of long format videos out there that really showed step by step how to make sourdough. So I had recently retired, I had some time on my hands, and I said, Oh, I'm gonna make one dough video and really go through the steps as a beginner. So I think it was I was baking my fifth loaf that I had ever baked, and I recorded like a two and a half hour, five-part series on the entire process, really pretty closely following Chad Robertson's method, but also describing how I was learning as a beginner. And the reason I wanted to do that was to capture the questions a beginner has, because once you become experienced at something, it's hard to go back in time and put yourself in the shoes of a beginner. So that was really where I started was just trying to do something where I saw there was a need for it with this focus on explaining it to beginners. Then two months later, we were locked down in the pandemic, and I just started recording one video every week or every two weeks of what was I baking at that time, and I started doing experiments. I was baking four loaves at a time, and I would push the fermentation time differently to try to figure out how to cut off bulk fermentation. I did experiments doing different shaping techniques, I did starter experiments, I did all kinds of things, and I just loved doing that. So during the pandemic, I think I made 30 or more videos. That was really when the bulk of my content came out. And then I got interested in social media and was very active on Facebook groups at the time when people were trying to figure out how to make sourdough through social media. So that's really where the sourdough journey began, was really by me recording and documenting my own journey. I literally started making videos as a beginner, and then after the pandemic, I really reached a pretty high level of capability. So then I started making videos more for intermediate to advanced bakers, and I'm still doing it now. I just published a new three-part video in April of this year on bulk fermentation, my favorite topic. And I continue to do that. I write manuals, I participate in social media, I have a website with, I don't know, 500 frequently asked questions, I have guides, I have tools, and almost all of my content is free. I really just do this out of a passion for helping people learn. And that's what really motivated me to get started and what still motivates me to do it.
SPEAKER_00You said something really interesting earlier that when bakers become more intermediate and advanced, they can forget what it feels like to be a beginner. Yeah. And so I like that you started this out with the foresight to document how it feels as a beginner because you don't know what you don't know, right? But then as you go along, you kind of forget where you started and you forget some of those basic questions and basic struggles that people have in the beginning and what that feels like. So I really love that you had the thought process through that so that you were reaching out to those who might be feeling the same way when they're first starting. So I would really like to spend some time talking about bulk fermentation. I would like to talk about starter health, and I would like to talk about gluten development. And I'd like to touch a little bit on whole wheat. But if you're comfortable with it, because we chatted a little bit before this, starter health is something that we just recently covered in the podcast on the kind of intro to sourdough and keeping a sourdough starter. And I had an episode on starter variables. But I would like to hear your thoughts on what you think makes a healthy starter, what's a strong starter, how do you keep a starter for those who are trying to maybe emulate what you've done or experiment in the same ways that you have.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah, so my starter maintenance routine has changed over time, and I've done uh just tons of experiments with different starter feeding ratios, temperature, hydration. I have one of the, I think one of the most sophisticated home starter labs out there. I don't know if you've seen any of the experiments that I do, but I basically built a lab where I can actually test the amount of carbon dioxide that's generated from a starter. So that's really the true measure of starter strength that you literally cannot approximate any other way. You can look at how fast your starter rises, how tall it rises, when it peaks, whatever, but that doesn't really tell you how much carbon dioxide is being generated. And once I was able to measure that, it really gave me unique insight in into how the starters were behaving. I'll come back to that. So my kind of starter maintenance journey started out with Shad Robertson's method from Tarteen. I created my own starter following his method. I maintained my starter following his method. And I think in the book, he recommends a 50-50 mix of bread flour and whole wheat flour, which is what I did for many years. And I believe he recommended a daily one-two-two feeding of the starter. What I learned after, I don't know, maybe a year or two years was that that really underfeeds your starter. If you're keeping a starter at room temperature and feeding it once a day, one-two-two just doesn't have enough food to get you through a 24-hour period. So over the years, I realized that I was underfeeding my starter. And one of the things that comes with that is that your starter becomes acidic. And what I realized was that so many home bakers were struggling with acidic starters. And if your starter is acidic, that's what leads to all the problems with your dough. It leads to slow fermentation, gummy, crumb, premature overproofing, gluten breakdown, it all starts with that starter acidity problem. And nobody ever mentioned this before. I mean, I went back through all the books that I had, and the reason is because if you're working in a production bakery, which is where all the people who wrote the original kind of set of starto books that we all used, they were feeding their starters twice or more a day. Seven days a week, six days a week, seven days a week. They don't know what it's like to have an acidic starter because they just don't have that problem. Then you get in the home environment where people are feeding their starter one-on-one ratio once a day or one-two-two once a day. Your starter is completely flat and acidic the next day, you feed it again, and it just starts to snowball and become more and more acidic over time. Or what many home bakers do is they put their starter in the refrigerator. I did this for many years. You take it out of the fridge, it's never really in top shape coming out of the fridge. You feed it once or twice, it kind of perks up, you bake with it, you put it back in the fridge, and you have these perpetually sluggish starters that have this residual acidity. So once I figured out that was the source of the problem, I really started to focus on how does a home baker de-acidify their starter? Because you can't just you can't tell people feed your starter twice a day every day. I mean, a lot of home bakers just can't work that into their schedule, even though it only takes a few minutes. It's just difficult for some people to do that. So what I focused on was uh this concept of uh keeping your starter alive with what I'd call sustenance feeding. Let's uh say one, two, two feeding a day or one, three, three feeding a day. And then if you bake once a week, you need to get your starter in top shape before you bake. So I developed this technique called the peak-to-peak feeding method where let's say two days before you plan to bake, you're gonna feed your starter and then as soon as it peaks, you're gonna discard and feed again. As soon as it peaks, you're gonna discard and feed again. And if you do that two or three times in a row, where you really catch your starter at peak and refeed it, that knocks down the acidity. And I was able to measure that and really demonstrate that technique really worked. So this is the technique that I developed for, like I said, home bakers who can't feed their starter all the time, or even for people who take pretty good care of their starters at home. It's just like doing routine maintenance on your car. Over time, every starter will drift towards getting out of balance where the acidity kind of outruns the yeast. And then, like I said, that that leads to a lot of problems with fermentation. So I focused a lot on this concept of identifying an acidic starter and learning how to fix an acidic starter. And I think I just think that helped so many people because that was such a rampant problem.
SPEAKER_00It is a huge problem and one that I see all the time. Can you define peak for us in your eyes?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. That's uh great question. Um Yes, when does your when is your starter at peak? Uh the answer to this is what I call the peak paradox. You only know your starter is at peak when it's actually a little past peak.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because it's at peak when it stops rising. So you always have to wait long enough to know that your starter stopped rising. I like to see it flatten out on top a little bit, and then I know for certain that it has passed is slightly past peak. But that's what I call the peak, though, is when your starter clearly stops rising, flattens out on top. Some people look at the top of their starter and they try to read the bubbles on their starter. Sometimes it'll start collapsing a little bit. You'll see it dimpling on top, you'll see some bubbles on top. I find the bubble reading of a starter to be very tricky and very inconsistent. So I really, I mean, I can't stop people from doing it with their own starter if it works for them. But as a general rule, trying to read your starter based on the bubbles is I don't recommend that. Just wait for it to peak and wait for it to flatten on top.
SPEAKER_00That's right. I don't agree with the float method either. I've I measure my pH. I have been able to get my starter to float at, you know, a high pH, at a low pH. It's not an accurate reading. And most people are not using a pH meter. I hope that one day they do, just because I think it helps you see a lot of things that you cannot see. Because when we're looking at volume, we're mostly focusing on what the yeast are doing, whereas the acidity is the result of the bacteria. So, as you said, as it starts to fall, that's because the bacteria are becoming more active. The flower is starting to become tired. And so it's it's going up, up, up, and it kind of holds, and then it starts to come down. And as you said, it's hard to know when it's coming down until it comes down. And so you learn the behavior of your starter, and that's why it's important to be consistent with your feeding so you can start to recognize some of these cues. Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And I and I think a lot of people misread when the starter peaks and starts falling because some people say it starts to do that because the yeast is running out of food. It's actually not. There is a massive amount of food still in your starter, uneaten flour, long after your starter reaches peak. So it has nothing to do with the availability of food. And then what I found is that when your starter peaks and starts falling, like you said, it's because the acidity is starting to grow faster than the yeast. It starts to break down the gluten. The gluten basically makes the starter leaky, so it can't trap as much air. That's what causes it to start to flatten. So even without a pH meter, when your starter flattens and starts falling, that's an indication that it's past that peak point where the yeast is still growing faster and stronger than the acid, and that's a good indication that your starter is ready to use in your dough.
SPEAKER_00And I think sometimes people forget that a starter or a lavan is essentially a mini bread dough. The way that the flower behaves is not different than the way that it would behave when you make a large batch of dough. The acid will start to build up so much that the gluten will begin to degrade. Those two things are not separate from each other. So it's great to think about these things and observe them and say, well, how does that then translate to what I'm doing over here when I go to mix my dough and I push the fermentation?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which kind of leads me into my next part of the conversation that I would like to have with you. And what I mentioned at the beginning, the question that I get the most frequently, and I'm sure that you do too, and probably every baker on Instagram who has even a moderate following, is when is bulk fermentation done? Like it's some simple answer, and it is not, it is complex. There are so many variables that play into this, and you have done such a beautiful job of explaining those variables, explaining how they change when bulk fermentation is done, what's left after dividing and shaping can play a part of it. And I know that we can't cover all of it today, but if you wanted to maybe just go a little bit into that about judging bulk fermentation, where people can go for resources, and just some of the research that you've done on that, I'd love to hear it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for that. Um, yeah, so when I got into making my videos back in 2020, the thing I learned really quickly was that the the hardest thing to learn is the cutoff of bulk fermentation, and it was the most important thing to learn. So, really quickly, I kind of honed in on that and said, this is the space that I want to figure out because if I'm struggling with it, I know other people are struggling with it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So back in 2020, I created this 10 criteria test called the bulk omatic method. And basically, it's all the observable factors when you're making your dough. And I'll just quickly go through the 10 things. I look at the dough temperature because the temperature really controls everything. I look at the percentage rise in the dough, and I'm really a stickler for accurately measuring the percentage rise. I like to use a straight-sided vessel, or if you're using a clearer bowl, I'll actually measure the milliliter, milliliters in the bowl and put tape on the bowl so I can accurately measure the percentage rise. Or some people use the aliquot method where you use a small jar on the side. But measuring the percentage rise is absolutely one of the best ways to measure how far along your bulk fermentation is. The way I describe it is it's like the odometer on your car. Your speed may differ every day, but the distance traveled is the same. And if you accurately measure the percentage rise, that's like measuring the distance traveled in your car. So, and I don't care about the speed, the speed can change based on temperature, the speed can change based on how strong your starter is that day, the type of flour that you're using, your hydration, but that percentage rise is one of the most consistently measurable things that I recommend everybody really learn how to do that well. The other things I measure are the timing. Some people say ignore the clock, read the dough, don't look at the clock. I generally agree with that. But if you're making the exact same recipe two days in a row with the same flour, same starter, same dough temperature, the timing is relevant. If you perfectly bulk ferment your dough in five and a half hours on Monday and you repeat that process exactly on Tuesday, the only thing that can differ is your day-to-day starter strength, which is real and that can vary. But if it takes five and a half hours on Monday, it's not going to take eight hours on Tuesday. So I suggest that people keep good records of the timing and the temperature and all the variables because that gives you a window where you can walk away from your dough and say, okay, I know it's going to be between five and six hours when this reaches my target because the temperature is the same as it was the day before. It just gives you a little bit of freedom to walk away from your dough and not be standing around the kitchen watching. Watching dough rise. Then some of the other criteria, I won't go through all these in detail, is but the dough should be domed on top. It'll have bubbles on the top, it has bubbles on the side. I like to do the wobble test where you kind of shake the dough and you look how it moves and how aerated it is. And then one of the things that I do that that almost nobody uses as a cutoff test for bulk fermentation is I do the window pane test throughout the entire process of bulk fermentation. And a lot of people hear that and they say, I thought the window pane test was used up front after mixing to measure sufficient gluten development. It is. And at that point, when you do the window pane test up front, you're stretching the dough between your fingers. You want it to be translucent and you want it to be strong. You want to be able to really stretch it and get a feel for kind of that strong, thin, translucent window pane that says you have enough gluten development. But as your dough ferments, it follows a very consistent pattern of gluten deterioration. Yeah. So the strongest it'll ever feel is up front in bulk fermentation, either right at the beginning or after the first few folds. And then as the dough begins fermenting, the acidity starts to build up, it will predictably start to relax and become more supple. And if you pull a window pane and really feel the dough, you'll feel the dough start to become fragile. It starts to become delicate. It starts to feel completely different. And once you know what it should feel like at the end of bulk fermentation, let's say you bake a perfect loaf, your dough will always feel like that for that specific recipe. And when you put your hands on the dough and you get that feel for where your dough is kind of like almost hanging by a thread, where if it ferments a little bit longer, the window pane will start breaking down in your hands. That's when it starts to overproof. So I really recommend that people put their hands on the dough a lot more than was typically recommended because that sense of touch and looking at your dough and feeling your dough is very repeatable in a fabulous way to assess the condition of your dough right at the end of bulk fermentation.
SPEAKER_00If you are working with the dough that you mentioned, I think you have like a some controls that you've listed, which is like basically the tartine method with 75% hydration, 10% whole wheat, the rest is bread flour, 2% salt, and forgive me, I think it's 20% starter inoculation.
SPEAKER_02That's correct.
SPEAKER_00What should the dough feel like at the end of bulk fermentation if you could give us some like tactile cues or what what could a baker be looking for when they're touching it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So in this case, where I'm using say 80 or 90% bread flour and 10 to 20% whole wheat flour, the dough is going to be super strong at the beginning of bulk fermentation. And as it goes through bulk fermentation, it becomes thinner where you when you actually pull the window pane, you'll just be able to see more daylight through it. It's translucent, almost transparent. It starts to look a little veiny as you stretch it. It's not a consistent surface of the dough like at the window pane in the beginning of the mix. At the end, you'll start to see the veins from the gluten kind of like a little spider webby, actually, with very thin, delicate, translucent dough between those. If the dough is breaking down and you start seeing holes in the dough, it's gone too far. So it's almost like as you're pulling that window pane, you want to be right on the edge where if it went another 30 minutes, it would start falling apart. And you can only get a feel for that by doing it, by going over the limit a couple of times, and then you'll say, okay, now I see when my dough is is breaking up on me. Um I should have backed it up, you know, a half hour earlier.
SPEAKER_00Great. And I something that I think about a lot is when someone goes from making, let's say, one or two loaves to wanting to do even mid-level production where they're making 50 loaves, 30 loaves. They might need to end bulk fermentation a little bit sooner, depending on the temperature of the dough, depending on what is left after dividing and shaping, which is something that you mentioned. You need to judge the end based off of what is left for that dough. Does it have a bench rest? Does it have an overnight cold retard? Are you making 10 loaves? Are you making a hundred loaves? What is the temperature of this dough? How long is it going to take before it gets to the fridge temperature? Like all of these things are really important. And I think they're variables that people don't really consider. They just sort of do what they see other people doing, but they're not thinking about the situation that they have in front of them. So, do you think that it's appropriate to end bulk fermentation a little bit sooner if you have a lot of dough to work through and perhaps use like a basket rest for to catch up? Or what would you recommend for maybe that scenario where you're starting to increase your production?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So let me just start with the baseline for what I think about, even if I'm making a small batch, one one to four loaves. So when I cut off bulk fermentation, that that cutoff, it's an arbitrary cutoff. The dough doesn't know bulk fermentation's done. I mean, we just decide it's done.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But the dough keeps fermenting. In fact, if it's at the same temperature, it ferments faster because the fermentation is exponential until it goes into the refrigerator. So you call the end of bulk fermentation, then I pre-shape the dough, and then I typically do a 30-minute bench rest. In that 30 minutes, quote, after bulk fermentation, the dough is fermenting faster than it was 30 minutes prior when it was in bulk fermentation. And everything that happens at room temperature before it goes into the fridge really accelerates during the shaping process. So I do a pre-shape, I do a 30-minute bench rest, I do a final shape, and then I always assume I'm doing a 30-minute rest on the bench before it goes into the refrigerator. So my standard process, in my standard process, there's an hour of fermentation after bulk fermentation before it goes in the fridge. That's the 30-minute rest between shaping and the 30-minute rest before it goes to the fridge. Then when it goes into the refrigerator, it depends on what your refrigerator temperature is, because that controls how quickly the dough stops fermenting as it goes into the cold retard. And in my videos in some various posts, I put continuous probe thermometers in my dough in the refrigerator, it takes 10 hours for the dough to get down to fridge temp. That's a massive amount of fermentation that's still happening in the refrigerator.
SPEAKER_00Especially if you cover your dough.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And in the summer, or if you have kids and they're opening and closing the refrigerator constantly, and even on different shelves in my refrigerator, the dough will land at a different ending dough temperature. So what I recommend people do is as you take your dough out of the refrigerator before baking, always take the temperature of your dough when it comes out of the fridge. And then that's the temperature on that spot in the fridge. If mine comes out of the refrigerator at 42 degrees on my middle shelf, that's the temperature of my middle shelf. If I put it on my top shelf, it'll be 39 degrees. If I put it on my bottom shelf, it'll be 43 degrees. And I know those different temperatures. So I actually can control a little bit of the fermentation based on where I place the loaf in my fridge. You can also just take the temperature of liquids in your refrigerator, put up three cups of water, top, middle, bottom shelf, leave them in there overnight, and then take the temperature. That's the best way to know what your true fridge temp is because it's rarely what your fridge is set to.
SPEAKER_00Oh, of course. And what a great way for someone who's doing larger scale production, like bake the ones on the bottom first, right? Exactly. If the ones on the top need a little more time, let them sit out before the oven. There's a way to play with that so that your production can be smooth. You said something really interesting, and I want to touch on it super quickly. I think that especially beginner and maybe even sometimes intermediate bakers think that the end of bulk fermentation is kind of it, right? Like it's over, it's done. I'm just pre-shaping, I'm going into the baskets. But I think there can be like a lot of uh-oh moments that happen in that last hour of pre-shape, final shape, and basket rest. I make a lot of bread, so I do have to use more basket rest time, I think, than the average person because it's just me. There's no team of people helping me with my 100 loaves on Thursdays. So it's really important. And I hope our listeners are maybe writing this part down. That that part after when you divide your dough and put it in the basket, the dough isn't slowing down. If anything, it's kind of accelerating.
SPEAKER_01It is. Yeah, if it's the same temperature or sometimes warmer. Sometimes if your kitchen is super warm, yeah, while you're shaping, the dough will actually heat up and it'll ferment even faster than it was when it was in the bowl, where it kind of insulates itself from the room temperature sometimes. So the reason I talk about this baseline of 30-minute rest between shaping, 30-minute rest before the fridge is because this is where it builds in flexibility for the baker to make kind of a game time decision. So if that's my standard process, then I look at my 10 criteria of when to cut off bulk. I cut off bulk, I start shaping the dough. Now I'm really putting my hands on the dough when I'm pre-shaping. So now if my dough is super proofy when I'm shaping it, where it just feels like I'm like, wow, this went a little further than the indicators would have suggested, then I have that one hour buffer already built in. So I can say, I'm not going to do a 30-minute bench rest before final shaping, I'm going to do 20 minutes. And then I'm going to final shape it and put it directly in the fridge. So I use that as my fine tuning of the bulk fermentation, basically that one hour time period. If I'm pre-shaping the dough that I thought was done and it's really stiff and it's not quite as far along as I thought, then I'll let it sit for an hour in the basket instead of my 30 minutes. So I use that as like my very fine tuning to dial it in before it goes into the fridge. Once it goes into the fridge, shelf placement can have a minor impact on it. But that that bench time is where you really can either speed it up or slow it down.
SPEAKER_00This is such an interesting conversation. This is like the nitty-gritty that not many people get into. So I'm feeling very passionate right now. I love what you're saying because it's like use your brain, right? Just is it too far along? Like, do I need to skip? You can maybe you need to skip pre-shape because it's so proofy and just go to your final shape. Can we touch on that for a second, though? Because I want to give our listeners just a little bit more there. If let's say you go to divide your dough and you're like, uh oh, this needs to go in the fridge, like A-S-A-P, it's quite far along. Would you then potentially use a different shaping method if it's too far along? Would you use more gentle hands? Or if it's let's say the reverse, if it still needs a lot more time, you might need to add more structure if you have a full hour in the basket. Is that something that comes into the puzzle at all for you?
SPEAKER_01Yes. That's another one of those decisions that you really make in the moment. And really, and I really try to think about what I would do if I took my dough out of my bulk fermentation bowl and it was much further along than I expected. It looks like it's overproofing before my eyes. So I generally would still pre-shape it. I would and then do a final shape. I still want two rounds of shaping. I don't think that cutting that 30 minutes out is a material enough difference in time to offset the potential benefit you get from doing the pre-shaping. You know what I mean? I'm trying to use the pre-shaping to build a little structure in dough that's losing its structure. So that's my first criteria at that point is this dough needs help. I need to make one last attempt to give it some structure before it gets in the fridge. So I still would do pre-shape and final shape. Um, you have to be careful that you don't maul the dough because it's so fragile. So I'm I'm pre-shaping, but I'm doing it somewhat gently. And then I would do a very short bench rest, just watch the dough and wait till it relaxes a little bit so so that you can see that it has enough extensibility to make the final shaping worthwhile. Then in the final shaping, one of the things I do if it's overproofed is I use a lot of flour. And this is something that I really discovered by accident because I rarely flour my dough when I when I shape. I actually try to shape with no flour because I try to keep excess flour out of my kitchen at all times. So in my typical process, once I'm done mixing my dough, I don't use any flour again in the entire process. That's kind of my standard method. But if my dough is overproofing, by flouring, by using extra flour in the dough, it encases the dough. It builds the skin of the dough, and it'll help trap some gas as you're shaping it. And because what happens if your dough is overproofing, the gluten's breaking down, the dough becomes leaky. The gases start leaking through the surface of the dough. So I'm like wrapping a balloon around the dough by flowering it just to try to trap a little bit more gas, even if it only buys me a few hours in the fridge or something like that. Uh, and then in terms of how aggressively do I shape the dough, I mean it's so hard to say. I want to build structure. That's the thing I would think about. So I would, I in my mind, I would say, can I pull off the classic tartine fold, which is the fold that builds the most structure. But as I'm doing that, if the dough just feels like it can't handle that, if it's just breaking down in my hands, I'll do something simple like the caddy clasp, which looks like the book fold, yeah, where you just grab both sides of the dough. If it's really far along, just do the book fold, pinch it together, get it in the banneton, and get it into the fridge. So that's really something you just have to decide based on whether you think the dough can tolerate it without just breaking down in your hands.
SPEAKER_00This is great. And there are quite a few, um, if I'm gonna use the word influencers or people who have a lot of followers on Instagram who are making just one loaf at a time and they push the proof really far at a low temperature, yeah, and it cannot handle much at all except a little like squish into the basket and then it goes directly into the fridge. And then people who make a hundred loaves, they need to have the pre-shape, they need to have the rest, they need to have the basket rest. You cannot use one method if you're making a hundred loaves, and you cannot use the other method if you're only making one. It just doesn't make sense. You have to think about as you're describing what is in front of you, what is the dough asking for? If I try the tartine shaping method and it's going to tear, then I have a backup option. I have the caddy clasp. It's about having a lot of things in the toolbox so that when the time comes, you can go through the Rolodex and say, what does this dough need? That's what I hear you saying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And I don't do a lot of large production volume baking. I'm generally baking one to four loaves at a time. So I'm also very aware when I'm teaching people that I'm describing what I'm doing as is a small batch method. I hand mix all my dough, I don't use a mixer, I don't have a hundred loaves on the bench where you're on loaf number 10 and you're sweating saying, How am I gonna do the other 90 of these?
SPEAKER_00But I think you understand, I think you understand enough about it and the way that you're describing it can apply to any baker, whether they're making one or a hundred or a thousand. You're teaching the rules. And so if you understand the rules, you can apply them appropriately depending on the batch size. And I think that's um significant and unique to what you're offering to the baking community. It doesn't matter how much people are making, you're telling them how it works, and so then they can make their decisions based off of that information.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that that was something I learned early on was I was intimidated by the production bakers who are baking 100 or more loaves at a time. And and the way I compensated for that was by really just observing all the details, one, two, three, four loaves at a time and documenting what I'm doing and experimenting all the time. So when I make four loaves, I never make them exactly the same way. I'm changing one variable in all four loaves. Even to this day, I never do the exact same thing twice because I'm always learning, I'm always experimenting. I photograph all my loaves, I document all my loaves. So for people who want to learn kind of baker's intuition, the method I used was I'm shortcutting that process when people say you have to bake a thousand loaves before you can read the dough. I mean, I was reading the dough much quicker than that because I was just being very meticulous about what I was observing and what I was documenting. So you can you can you can definitely shorten the learning curve and it just makes the intuition come quicker. I guess that's what I'm getting at.
SPEAKER_00What I hear you saying is instead of sacrificing all 10 of one batch of one way, like you can let some sit out a little longer, you can shape some differently, you can bake some hotter or leave one out before the fridge. Within one mix, you can discover many outcomes versus saying, okay, all ten of these loaves, all four of these loaves, I'm gonna do the exact same way and I'm gonna learn one lesson. Why do that when you can learn four lessons in each bake?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. That's kind of my mindset, and that's what I recommend for people that really want to learn, but they're just not baking at high volume. Really do that small experimentation all the time and keep good notes because the the small changes are material. Like five percent difference in hydration has a material impact on your loaf. Uh, you're using your starter at peak or past peak has a material impact on your loaf. Your oven temperature, if my oven temperature is 25 degrees Fahrenheit hotter on my second bake, the loaf bakes differently than on the first bake. These things all matter. So rather than figuring that out after a thousand bakes, uh I'm figuring that out every time I bake.
SPEAKER_00I think sometimes people can be maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but it can be overwhelming to think about all the things that affect bread, and you're just like, God, I just want to make a loaf of bread. Like, does it have to be this hard? Um and I don't think it does. I just think if you want to, if you want it to be the best that it can be, if you want to really understand the mechanics, if you want to understand all of the rules, these are some of the paths that you can go down. But what's so great about what you've done is you've taken out a lot of those painful experiences for people that they might end up having, and you've sort of given them a path and a guide they can follow so that the success comes a little bit more quickly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and just from my own perspective, what I'm looking for when I bake, I mean, I'm obviously very scientific, and people think I'm analytical science geek, which I kind of am, but I'm also incredibly artistic. And the reason I use the science is to get more shots at the art. When I bake, I want to just bake the most spectacular looking and tasting loaf imaginable. And by using the science, I get more shots at that. And so I'm really going for the 10 out of 10 perfect loaf every time I bake. That's why I'm so meticulous about what I do.
SPEAKER_00Let me just interject real quick because I don't want to lose this thought. I would argue that you know, this is a culinary art. It is an art. And is it true that you're a musician?
SPEAKER_01I am.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I I got a little tip ahead of time from um Josh from Dope. Oh it's interest, it's interesting because music, there's there's a lot of math involved, there's a lot of structure involved. You have to understand how it's broken down in eight counts and four counts or different measures, different keys, whatever. It's a lot of structure, it's a lot of math, it's a lot of planning. But what comes out is a beautiful song that's very artistic, that can make people feel something. But behind the scenes, there was a lot of work and structure that happened. It's the same with bread for me, and it sounds like for you. The end product is this beautiful thing that can, I think, evoke an emotion. Um, it can be a centerpiece for a table, it's Instagram worthy, but behind it was a lot of math, was a lot of structure, was a lot of science.
SPEAKER_01The two things are are kind of inextricable for me. The music analogy is like playing the piano. I mean, you need to be incredibly technically proficient at playing the piano before you can even begin to be artistic. So it's kind of like that's the foundation. I took piano lessons when I was a kid, and just the thousands of hours I spent playing scales and all that, it that builds the proficiency that's then the foundation to create art on top of that. It's the same with sourdough. You I use the science and the tools and the thermometers and the percentage rise to give me the foundation to create the art on top of that.
SPEAKER_00That's beautiful. And I think sometimes people think I'm a little bit um cold hearted or um too science based when it comes to baking bread. I feel like I when I started pushing pH really hard in the baking community, I got a lot of pushback of people who thought it was pointing. Who were, you know, my grandma used to mix bread together and she didn't use a scale or a thermometer. Like, that's great. I love that for your grandma. But like, I didn't grow up learning how to make bread, and I went to school for food science, and these are things that are interesting to me. I have no intuition about making bread because I was in fitness for 15 years. Like, I need something to help me figure it out. And I enjoy, I genuinely enjoy the science part of it, the rules, the structure, the mechanics, because it helps me do the things that I want to do and make the type of bread that I want to make for my community. And I personally love and enjoy those things. And I know they're not for everyone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, people have different learning styles. I'm also really aware of that because in addition to considering myself a baker, I'm probably more of an educator. And I'm always aware that some people relate to the science and math differently than others do. So that's one of the things that I've done with my videos and my written guides, is I really try to take the science and make it approachable for non-science-y, non-math-oriented people, because everybody should be able to make sourdough and different people have different styles. And you just you have to acknowledge that as an educator.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And I I like the structure of science and temperatures and times and all of these things. And I am an educator. I teach three-day courses now and I do online consulting. And sometimes someone will come to me, and I've chatted about this on the podcast a little bit, but they are more of an intuition baker. They don't want to do any of the things that I'm doing. And I'll send them to Josh Fairbanks because he is an intuition baker and he will tell you all day long what to smell and touch and feel and like how to go through that path. And that person is that kind of baker, and I can point them over there. If they're looking for a structure of when to end bulk fermentation, I can send them to your page. If they want really structured sheets, I can send them to Mauricio. Like there's there's room for everyone, and there's, as you said, a lot of different ways to learn. I do think that your page has a lot of the science, but there's also a lot of visuals for people who are visual learners. So it is a really nice place where I think a lot of people can come to learn and feel welcomed and they don't feel overwhelmed. Can we is is pH something, and we don't have to keep this part if it's not. Is pH something that you've explored or you're ex if you've thought about exploring it? Yeah, yeah. Do you have experience? Okay, let's talk about it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I was one of the early adopters of using pH meters. Obviously, people use them in bakeries, but among kind of the social media home baker influencers, I went down the pH path very early. And I still use pH meters to this day. And I would say I have a love-hate relationship with pH and pH meters. The meters themselves, they're expensive, they're finicky, they're hard to maintain. Uh, there are a lot of cheap ones out there that don't work, and I don't recommend the ones that you typically, the no-name ones you find on Amazon. If anybody really wants to buy a pH meter, I have a video and a guide where I reviewed all the popular models. But the two that I recommend are the lab quality ones from HANA Instruments, the HANA Halo 2 and the Aphora Zen. Those are the only two I would recommend. So I got into measuring pH, and what I found was even with all the rigorous repetition and record keeping that I I do with my bulk fermentation, for example, the pH readings were different at the end of bulk fermentation. And and I just could not really get a consistent set of readings. So I've never published pH uh guidance for that reason. People ask me for it, and I included a little bit of it in one of the videos that I recently made. But I just don't believe that somebody can say when your dough is at a pH of 4.0, while fermentation is done and you should appreciate it. I just don't believe it's that consistent.
SPEAKER_00I have been using pH every single week, probably for the last three and a half years and recording everything, writing it all down. I've used it for my whole wheat baking. I take the pH of all of my Levan builds, most of my starter feeds, because it's information for me to collect. And when I first started doing it, I thought that pH was a really hard and fast rule of okay, it's 4.6, it's time to divide my dough if it's like a basic country dough or whatever. So one day I was like, well, what will happen if I let it go to like 4.4? What's gonna happen? Not a lot happened. So it is uh, or what happens if I use the starter at um 4.2? And or what if I use it at 3.9? Is there gonna be a huge difference in my dough? I will argue there is there are differences in the dough a little bit. But what I've come to realize is that, well, it's very useful if you're making a lot of whole grain doughs because it's much more sensitive and it can at least help you be ahead of it a bit. But for like general country dough, if you are someone like yourself who's maintaining a very healthy starter, someone who is tracking all of their times and temperatures, someone who's taken all of the acidity out of their starters already, it's not going to be super helpful for you because it's more of a window than a hard and fast rule. But let's say someone has a really unhealthy starter with a lot of built-up acidity, like you mentioned in the beginning, their starter might not be doubling, but it will reach an appropriate quote unquote pH of let's say 4.0. Yeah. So let's say this person is not maintaining their starter in a healthy way and it's it's slow, it's sluggish, but the pH is correct. That person might misuse pH because they think they've hit the right pH to go into a dough, and then they're going in and then they're tracking their pH all along the way, but their starter was never really healthy to begin with. Yeah. So it's it's um it's a tool that I think can be helpful if you need that check to be like, is it kind of where I think it is? It can just be a quick check and balance for someone who already understands the mechanics. But if you're using it as a beginner to say, oh, my starter is ready to go into my dough, but you didn't do the initial work to have a healthy starter to begin with, I think you'll run into a lot of problems.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's part of the reason that I haven't published a lot on it, is because I think people would use it as a crutch, as like a certainty. And I think that could be really harmful, especially for beginners who are using it in a way that it's outweighing the other criteria that they should be learning. Like if I use a pH meter for bulk fermentation, I have my 10 criteria that I always look at. PH is the 11th, and it's no better or worse. It's actually worse than some of the other ones. Yeah, it's not in my top three things that I would look at to determine when bulk fermentation is done. But if I were running a production bakery or if I was running a micro bakery out of my home and baking 100 or more loaves, I absolutely would use it because it can help you detect runaway fermentation for sure. If I'm shaping my dough and it's at 3.9, I'm working like double time and like trying to get stuff into the refrigerator as quickly as possible. So it can help you prevent kind of overproofing for sure, but trying to use it for a specific dial-in of bulk fermentation or even starter readiness, it's it's kind of a weather vein indicator.
SPEAKER_00I just taught a one-hour, very quick um class about pH at West Coast Breadfest. And I I baked three different loaves. I baked one off at the pH 4.4. It was just a standard country loaf, just like your tartine loaf that you're describing, made with a stiff starter, but everything was adjusted for that. One that was baked off at 4.4, one that was baked off at four, and one that was baked at 3.8. And all of them were acceptable. They were all loaves of bread that I would want to eat. Was one better than another? Absolutely, but they were all fine. And it's because I I understand all the other parts of the process and I maintain a really healthy starter, you're not going to see that significant of a difference where it's like you need to fully panic. But again, I was only making four loaves of bread for this event. If I'm making a hundred loaves and it's a hot day and I stick my pH meter in and it's lower than I want it to be, just like you said, I'm like, okay, I gotta hurry up. Or if it's pretty sluggish because it's the winter time, I might make the choice to put it in the proofers so that the dough can warm up. It helps me make decisions based off of my end goals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's not something I think people should be relying on a hundred percent. But it is something I would like to talk about more on the podcast and in general with other bakers because I do, I like it. It's fun for me. And I use it a lot, mostly for the uh Livan. That's the the most important pH for me is a pH of my Livan, especially when I'm working with whole wheat dough, which is just a different conversation for a different day because whole wheat is another animal. I have a question for you actually, because someone sent me a question this morning, and I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but I do want to read this question to you, and then we can all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We can move on to our closing questions. So this is interesting because I had my idea for an answer, but I would love to hear what you have to say because I think it ties into exactly what you just said. So she says when I feed my starter at a one to two to two or even a one to five to five, it stays very active. But when I want to create more volume and have it ready in 12 hours since I'm feeding it the night before, I'll feed it at a 110-10 or even a 112-12 and I leave it on the counter overnight. The issue is the starter will still double or more, but it'll look more sluggish than I would like it to. Is that because the inoculation is too low, or do you think that's a starter strength issue?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think it's the combination of if the seed starter is overly acidic to begin with, and you do a high feeding ratio, you'll hit that tipping point before 110-10. Yeah. So it so that's that's kind of a great example that if if a one to five to five ratio works and a one to ten to ten doesn't work, the only thing that causes that is the seed starter is acidic, or you're using you're you're you're amplifying the acidity some way.
SPEAKER_00I agree. When I'm doing my small feeding ratios, I typically will try to, because I do use a pH meter, I try to catch my um my starter once it's doubled, and then it's also reached a pH of about four. Sometimes I'll let it go to 3.9, it's no big deal. But when I'm doing that long overnight feed, it's about a 1 to 15 uh a starter to flower and it's at 60% hydration, all this to say, I try to catch the starter seed a little bit younger because I know that I've got that whole long time to go and I don't want a big um acid buildup overnight. These are really deep dives down paths that I find really, really interesting. So my our the podcast is called Saving Bread. I think that that can mean something different to anyone who hears it. But what are you trying to protect in bread culture? What are you trying to preserve and what are you hoping in the future of of micro baking and cottage baking and just for the home baker?
SPEAKER_01I think the thing that really is at the foundation of everything I do is this idea that everybody should be able to make sourdough. Anybody. Any homebaker anybody. And that's really what I strive for. It's the most basic kind of human sustenance, bred, kind of created civilization in many ways. And you go back to Egypt and Rome and Greece and the Middle East and India and sourdough in today's world is still more exclusive than it should be. And I don't know why. I think because it came to people through kind of the bakery or professional baking world, and then it turned into kind of this uh artisan craft hobby for a lot of people. And it's it should be like making chocolate chip cookies. It should be like I'm gonna teach my kids how to make something in the kitchen and I'm gonna teach them how to make sourdough. That's what I hope happens eventually, is that it just becomes a normal part of of what people learn how to do again, because a hundred years ago everybody knew how to do that, and then we collectively forgot how to do it when packaged yeast was created. So that's what I hope to save, I guess. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like I really feel from you that you don't want it to be an elitist hobby and you don't want it to feel competitive. Everyone is welcome at the table, and it should be something that anyone anywhere can do and feel successful. And I just wanted to thank you for all of the things that you've contributed to the sourdough community because a lot of what you've shared just out of your passion and the kindness of your heart has helped me. It excites me to see what you're doing and learning and experimenting with. And it always motivates me when I see other people doing something because then it makes me realize, like, oh, I can do that too. You know, that person did it, I can do it too. And I think you are that for a lot of people out there. They see you doing these things, and so they believe within themselves that they're capable of doing it too. So I think you're doing a really great job at that.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So our my final question for you is where can our listeners go to support you? Where can they learn from you? Where can they find you?
SPEAKER_01So you can find me on Instagram at the sourdough journey, on Facebook at the sourdough journey, and on those two social media platforms, I publish a lot of the day-to-day experiments that I do that might not show up in my long format YouTube videos or even in some of my guides and things like that. So there's always new content out there just based on what I'm currently testing and working on. And then most of my content, all of my content is available through my website at thesaurdoughjourney.com and on YouTube at the sourdough journey. And I just published a great new three-part series in April called Mastering Bulk Fermentation. It's three hours long. And I basically bake eight loaves of bread and go through the entire process from mixing, assessing bulk fermentation, looking at all the 10 criteria, taking the pH levels, go through the entire process, and then I bake the loaves at different cutoffs of bulk fermentation. I show how to read the crumb so you can assess if your loaf is underproofed, perfectly proofed, or overproofed. The best piece of work that I've ever done. So I really encourage people to start their mastering bulk fermentation. And I also have a guide that comes along with that in addition to the three videos.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for sharing how we can find you online on Instagram and your website. And again, thank you so much for having this chat with us today. And I'm sure you and I will be talking soon. So I'm gonna end the recording for us and we can chit chat a little bit more after, okay? Again, thank you to Tom Kakuza for joining me on Saving Bread. You can find Tom on Instagram at the sourdough journey with underscores in between the words. You can find him on YouTube at the sourdough journey and thesourdoughjourney.com, where he has an enormous amount of free information, guides, and resources for sourdough bakers. If you want to go further into what we talked about today, Tom also has a three-part mastering bulk fermentation series where he walks through the fermentation process, his criteria for determining when bulk is complete, and how to read the finished loaf. I really loved where this conversation ended with the idea that bread should not be an exclusive hobby. It should be something people can learn, make, share, and pass on. To all of you, thank you so much for listening every week. This community has grown more than I could have ever imagined and quickly. And it's really thanks to all of you for sharing, for commenting, for engaging. And if you just have a couple of minutes right now at the end of this episode to hop on to whatever listening platform you're using right now and just leave us a review, give us a little five-star rating. I can't tell you how much it helps out the podcast. And I really appreciate it, and I love all the notes that I see from all of you each week. So again, thank you for listening. Thank you for being here, and I'm looking forward to chatting with you all next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Saving Bread Podcast. Music by Joshua from Dope. I'm Allie White, and as always, happy baking, and long live real bread.