This is the #1 thing women lie to each other about. What is it? @Kristi Rieke

Nine signals. One verdict. No charts to print. I built this because bulk fermentation is where most bakers struggle. Most advice is either “just guess” or a three-page lab report. Neither helps you in the moment. The Fermentation Compass reads what your dough is telling you right now: rise percentage, dome shape, surface bubbles, wobble, windowpane, smell, and more. Everything rolls into one clear call: → Underproofed → Getting close → In the zone → Pushing it → Overproofed It also adjusts for your dough. High hydration. Whole grain. Low leaven. It accounts for it. This is a free tool for Crust & Crumb Academy members. Built for bakers who don’t come here to get likes, but to get better. Come bake with us 👉 https://skoo.ly/crust-crumb-academy

57 to 62% engagement rate. Consistently. I didn’t believe those numbers were possible when I started this journey. Our members proved me wrong. Here’s what’s actually happening inside Crust and Crumb Academy. Our Saturday Bake-Alongs generate over 7,000 interactions in a single thread each week. Likes, comments, encouragement, troubleshooting, wins, fails, all of it. That kind of activity is what earned us our star on Skool.⭐ But the thing I look forward to most every week isn’t Saturday. It’s Sunday. Every Sunday I write a recap of the bake-along the way ESPN recaps a game I missed. Play by play. All highlights and no commercials. Every member who showed up gets mentioned by name. It’s long. It’s funny. It’s informative. And when you read it you feel like you were there, at the game. When you participated you feel seen. Everyone wants to see their name in print and my job is to make sure the ones doing the work get the spotlight they deserve. Last month I started a monthly roll call. Every member, new or veteran, re-introduces themselves. A paragraph that tells us what’s going on in their life. What they’re baking. We talk in passing every day in the chat but, we don’t really know each other that way. Oh your bread looks nice, beautiful score, nice oven spring. That’s not conversation. Turns out when you give people permission to open up they will. 654 members. Over 400 comments from members in that one introduction thread. That’s engagement. We also reach out to every new member personally. The application asks a question: what do you hope to learn or gain as a baker by joining the Academy? We use that answer to connect them with a specific classroom resource, a lesson, a recipe, something that speaks directly to what they came here for. Members who had never said a word in the community reply to those DMs. Now they’re involved.

The reason most people never go from good to great, or even OK to good, is simple. They don't give good enough long enough to work. If you go too hard too soon, new behaviors never stick. Want to run a marathon? Probably should run a 5K first. Want to dial in your nutrition? Start by just eating three solid meals a day. Want to write a book? Write a blog first. You can do hard things. But you'll probably have to do the easy things first. And by the way, the hard things don't get easier. You just get better. Same goes for bread baking. It's not hard. It just feels that way when you're figuring it out alone. Inside Crust & Crumb Academy, we start where you are and build from there. No judgment, no intimidation. Just good bread and good people. 👉 Come bake with us. https://skoo.ly/crust-crumb-academy​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

It’s Easter week and over at Crust & Crumb Academy, we’re doing something a little different. We’re baking together. All week. Not just Saturday, though our famous Saturday bake-alongs are something you have to experience at least once. This week, because Easter falls on the weekend, we opened it up. Grab any Easter bread from our Recipe Pantry and start whenever you’re ready. Search “Easter” and every Easter bread we have comes up. Search “sourdough” and our entire sourdough collection is right there. Or just browse and let something pull you in. 👉 pantry.bakinggreatbread.com This week we’re baking Easter Bunny Bread together as a community. I pulled mine out of the oven yesterday. I just posted the video below and I’ll warn you now, it’s going to make your kitchen smell incredible just watching it. But here’s the thing. This isn’t really about Easter bread. It’s about having something to make with your hands. Something to put on the table. Something that makes the people you love stop and say, where did you learn to do that. That’s what we do at Crust & Crumb Academy. Come bake with us this week. 👉 https://skoo.ly/crust-crumb-academy Henry ⭐🔥