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22d (edited) • 🔬 Science & Innovation
👀Where Are My Bread Science Geeks?
🔥 Last week I watched a creator on Instagram walk through her system for tracking bulk fermentation
Charts. Graphs. PDFs. Front and back. Three pages deep.
😅 I’m not exaggerating. It looked like a college lab report.
🤝 And look, I respect the effort. I really do. I understand that a certain segment of our community genuinely loves that level of detail.
🧠 I’m a science nerd myself.
But I watched it and kept thinking… there has to be a better way.
💡 Because here’s the thing
If you really want to understand your bulk fermentation, you're not going to do it by filling in blanks on three sheets of paper while your dough is rising.
It’s just not practical.
⏳ By the time you’ve found the right chart, your dough has moved on without you.
👨🍳 So I built something.
🧭 I call it The Fermentation Compass.
It tracks 9 observable signals from your dough:
• temperature• time• percent rise• dome shape• surface bubbles• side bubbles• the wobble test• the windowpane test• smell
…and combines them into one clear verdict:
👉 under proofed👉 getting close👉 in the zone👉 pushing it👉 over proofed
🚫 No charts to print🚫 No blanks to fill in
You just tell it what you're seeing…and it tells you where you stand.
🎯 It even adjusts for YOUR recipe
High hydration? Whole grain? Low leaven percentage?
The target ranges shift to match the dough you're actually making, not some generic formula from a textbook.
📊 And there’s a Bake Timeline built in
Every 30 to 60 minutes, log your readings.
By the end of your bake, you’ve got a full visual record of how your dough got from “not yet” → “let’s go”
🟢🟡🔴 Nine colored dots per check One glance tells the whole story
⚖️ Now, I’ll be the first to say this isn’t for everyone
Some of you have been baking long enough that you can read your dough by feel
👉 And that’s the goal
But for those of you who want something in between “just guess” and “three-page lab report”
This is what I’ve got
🛠️ It’s still a work in progress
If you see something that needs adjusting, or if there’s a feature you’d want added, let me know
I’m building this for you, not for me
👇 In the meantime
Go check your dough against it and tell me what you think
💬 Leave your thoughts in the comments
I want to hear from the science geeks AND the “I just poke it and hope” crowd
👉 Both of you need this
~ Henry ⭐🔥
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👀Where Are My Bread Science Geeks?
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