Good morning, bakers. This is our home base for today. 🔥 Two versions, same bread, same 80% hydration, no shaping, no scoring, all flavor: 👉 Yeasted with Poolish: pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/rustic-italian-ciabatta 👉 Sourdough with Levain: pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-italian-ciabatta (Swap these for the trackable community links from the recipe card share button.) 🧭 How to use this thread: 📸 Post your poolish or levain photo first thing. Show me what you woke up to. 💬 Drop questions in the comments as you go. Mixing, fermentolyse, coil folds, bulk rise, divide and cut, final proof, bake. Every stage. I’ll be in here all day. 🏷️ Tag your photos with the stage so we can all follow along.“Poolish ready,” “Coil fold #2,” “Just divided,” “In the oven,” “Crumb shot.” ⚠️ A few reminders before you start: 👀 Watch the dough, not the clock. 50 to 70% rise on bulk, not doubled. Doubled means overproofed, and ciabatta will go flat on you. 💧 Wet hands and a wet bench scraper are your best friends today. Don’t add flour to a wet dough. Trust it. 🎥 The coil fold video I posted yesterday is pinned. Watch it once before your first fold if you’ve never done one. 🔥 Steam matters. Cast iron skillet of hot water on the bottom rack, or a Brod & Taylor dome — either works. Don’t skip it. 💡 If your bake doesn’t come out picture-perfect, post it anyway. We learn more from honest bakes than from highlight reels. 🚀 Let’s go. Drop your starting photos below. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

I just dropped a new video walking through the three baguette paths. Yeasted. Poolish. Sourdough. Same shape. Three completely different stories. If you've been wondering which one to bake this weekend, watch this first. It'll save you from picking wrong. Here's the short version of what's in it. The baguette isn't really one bread. It's three breads sharing a shape. And the skills stack on top of each other. Yeasted teaches you the shape and the score. Poolish teaches you what time and pre-fermentation do to dough. Sourdough teaches you to read the wild yeast. You don't have to walk it in that order. But the climb's a whole lot easier when you take it one step at a time. Three things stay the same no matter which one you pick: 1. The shape. A 14 to 16-inch roll, tapered at the ends. 2. The score. Three or four overlapping cuts at a 30 to 45-degree angle. 3. The steam. The crust sets in the first 10 minutes. Without steam, your loaf can't expand. What changes is your relationship with time. That's really the choice you're making when you pick a recipe. Not a different bread. A different level of time and dough management. Pick yours for this weekend's bake-along: 🥖 No starter? Start here. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/french-bread-baguette?utm_source=skool&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=recipe-share 🥖 Want bakery-level flavor without managing a starter? https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/classic-poolish-baguette?utm_source=skool&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=recipe-share 🥖 Active starter ready to go? https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-baguettes?utm_source=skool&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=recipe-share

This was the most Monday-ish Tuesday I’ve had in a few weeks! Work is being very “worky” with me logging almost 30 hours in just two days so far. I needed some stress relief this morning after waking at 3:03 AM, so I decided to mix a SD discard loaf around 7:30. The plan was to add salt at 8:30, then four sets of stretch and folds every 30 minutes, at 9:00, 9:30, 10:00 and 10:30. Well…the bottom fell out of the day pretty early. I got the salt added at 10:15, a round of S&F at 10:45, the next set at 12:30. My dough sat on the counter until 4:00! This wasn’t going to be a loaf of bread, so I made the executive decision to shift gears. I had purchased a 14” cast iron pan from Walmart a couple months ago to use for focaccia, and today would be its inaugural use. This pan was less than $20. I added some olive oil to the pan, plopped the dough in it, dimpled and covered for an hour, preheated the oven to 425, added basil, oregano, Parmesan and mozzarella. Baked it for 30 minutes, and this is one of the best focaccias I’ve ever made. I could’ve baked it longer, but this girl was hungry. I grabbed a slice and headed back to my office. I’m so thankful I’ve learned to shift and pivot when it comes to baking. All of this to say, don’t give up your dough! It might seem like it’s all going sideways, but you can shift and pivot and end up with something delicious!! Happy Baking!!

This weekend we're going to baguettes. And there's a reason we're getting to them now. Look at what we've done the past two weeks. We learned the couche on ciabatta. We built a poolish for that same ciabatta and watched what an overnight pre-ferment does to flavor and extensibility. Both of those skills carry straight over to baguettes. We're not learning new things this weekend. We're putting the same tools to work in a new shape. That's the method. Each bake builds on the last one. Nothing wasted. Three recipes in the Recipe Pantry. Pick the one that matches where you are. 🥖 New to baguettes? Start here. Classic French Bread Baguette — four ingredients, overnight cold ferment, 72% hydration. Two loaves, cleanest entry point in the pantry. No pre-ferment, no starter. Just dough, time, and shape. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/french-bread-baguette?utm_source=skool&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=recipe-share 🥖 Liked the poolish ciabatta? Run it back. Classic Poolish Baguette — same poolish you just built, in a new shape. 12 to 16 hour pre-ferment, 75% hydration, three baguettes. If you nailed the ciabatta, you already know how this dough is going to feel. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/classic-poolish-baguette?utm_source=skool&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=recipe-share 🥖 Sourdough bakers, this one's yours. Sourdough Baguettes — overnight levain, 75% hydration, three baguettes at 265g. Same shaping rhythm we practiced on the ciabatta couche. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-baguettes?utm_source=skool&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=recipe-share

🎬 Saturday Bake Along. 🌾 The dough you said scared you to death. 🔥 By Sunday morning, you'd baked it anyway. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝟭𝟰 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲. Our Saturday recap is growing and getting better, just like all of you. More bakers. More stories. More dough that got picked up and finished. So I built it a home of its own. Pull up a chair. Read it through. Find your story. Let me know what you think of the new format — I want to hear from you. 👉 https://calm-osprey-9ekj.here.now/ If you baked and you're not in the roster, drop a comment and I'll add you. I read every one. If you were unable to join us yesterday, I invite you to get started with us this week. Coaching, not judgment. — Henry ⭐🔥 @Andrea Walker · @Ann Snow · @Angela Sides-McKay · @Candi Brown-McGriff · @Cheryl Odden · @Chris Pallister · @Colleen Vergara · @Deborah Karaban · @Donna Angelo · @Ehsan Omara · @Gaylord Foreman · @Gwen Roach · @Heather Lattanzio · @JoAnn Amato · @Joseph Bilodeau · @Judy Lyle · @Kathee Judd · @Linda Glantz · @Linda Gregory · @Marilee Berry · @Matt Davies · @Mauvette Bailey · @Michel Jodoin · @Michele Nilson · @Patt Stanaway · @Priscilla Fuesting · @Rhonda Talamo · @Robert Caldas · @Ruby Dack · @Sandy Chong · @Stacey Avraham · @Susie Kendall · @Ted Machart · @Tracy Havlik