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The Bread & Butter Way

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13 contributions to The Bread & Butter Way
Good morning, BBW community!
Good morning, BBW community! If you just found your way in here — welcome. 🙌 I'm so glad you're here. This is a community of real home bakers following one simple method. No noise, no conflicting advice, no pressure to be perfect. Before anything else, I'd love to know: Where are you in your sourdough journey right now? Drop one of these in the comments: - 🌱 Haven't started yet — just curious - 🫙 I have a starter but haven't baked yet - 🍞 I've baked before but something went wrong - 🙌 I'm baking regularly and want to go deeper And if you haven't started the free course yet — it's inside the Classroom tab. That's your first step. Everything else builds from there.
0 likes • 13m
🙌🏻
It's First Loaf Friday!
Show us what came out of your oven this week. First loaf, tenth loaf, flat loaf, beautiful loaf — ALL of it counts here. Every bake is data. Every loaf is progress. Drop your photo below. Tell us one thing you'd do differently next time (or one thing you nailed).
0 likes • 5d
@Sandra Brenes thank you!
0 likes • 5d
@Sandra Brenes it was a fun experiment!
Real talk: your dough doesn't care what the clock says.
It cares about your kitchen temperature, your flour, your starter activity, and your hydration. A dough that finishes its first rest (aka bulk fermentation, first rise) in 4 hours in a 78° kitchen might take 7+ hours in a 68° kitchen. Neither is wrong. They're just different conditions. The skill isn't following a timer. It's learning to read your dough. And that's actually a learnable skill — which means you can get there. So tell me — which of these feels most familiar right now? 👉 "My dough has been sitting for hours and I have no idea if it's done." 👉 "I'm not sure what over-fermented vs. under-fermented even looks like." 👉 "I just follow the time and hope for the best." Drop your answer below — even if it's just a number of hours or a quick "that last one, definitely." There are no wrong answers here. This is exactly the kind of thing we work through together. (And if you want the full breakdown — what to look for, what to adjust, and how to finally stop second-guessing your dough — it's all inside the Sourdough Foundations module in BBW. It's the explains Sourdough Condition that makes everything else click.) 👉 Learn more → www.thebreadandbutterway.com/membership
1 like • 5d
@Sandra Brenes for sure the first one and I relate heavily to the checking often. I know the signs to look out for that you mentioned but I still struggle to know when they are actually signs. For example, is their bubbling? Sure! But how much? Do I have enough or should there be more? Is there too much and I’m on the verge of overproofing? lol same thing for if it is jiggly or airy. I still struggle to read the dough. Getting better though!
0 likes • 5d
@Sandra Brenes very good points! I like to take photos of the whole process. Mixed dough, each fold, if I go check it I snap a photo, preshaping, shaping, etc. I don’t keep them forever but it helps me remember what it looked like vs what it looks like now. And then a lot of repetition of the same recipe until I can get good results consistently.
Starter Check-In
How is your sourdough starter? A healthy starter should be doubling in size after feeding, have a domed top, smell tangy (not nail-polish-remover sharp), and be bubbly (big & small) all the way through. If yours isn't doing all of that yet — that's okay. Most starter problems come down to three things: temperature, feeding ratio, or flour type. Drop a photo of your starter below and tell me: - How old is it? - What flour are you using? - Where are you keeping it? Let's troubleshoot together. 👇
1 like • 11d
@Sandra Brenes totally! I just fed my regular starter. Here it is. I’ll post back when it’s risen!
1 like • 11d
[attachments]
May Intention: Rising Strong
Hello Friends! May is here. And something is rising. We're calling this month Rising Strong. Not just the dough and your starter. But You. Because baking bread isn't just about bread. It's about slowing down. It's about understanding something deeply enough that your hands just know. It's about making something real. This month we're going deeper into the why behind sourdough — why it behaves the way it does, why your kitchen temperature matters, why patience in the dough translates to peace in your day. The BBW Cohort Coaching Call (on Mondays) will focus on Sourdough Foundations & Mastering the Artisan Loaf. We will go over in detail reasons our starters & dough may not rise & solutions! Tell me — what's one thing about sourdough you've always wanted to understand but never could find a clear answer to? Drop it below.
1 like • 15d
Consistently judging bulk fermentation across different hydration levels. I’ll nail one and not the next or nail one hydration but not another.
0 likes • 14d
@Sandra Brenes yes! I have been trying a 65% and 75% recipe each weekend to see the difference and try to gage all the signs between all levels of hydration.
1-10 of 13
Colleen Vergara
3
42points to level up
@colleen-vergara-vergara-5833
Looking to have some fun with a community of bakers while improving the foods I feed my family!

Active 10m ago
Joined Jan 26, 2026
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