☀️ Good morning, bakers. It's bake day. 🥖🔥 Drop in here all day. This is the working thread. 📸 Photos ❓ Questions 📈 Progress shots 😅 Panics 🏆 Wins 🥣 Anything you've got I'll be in and out of the kitchen and in and out of this thread until the last loaf is out of the oven. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📍 Here's where I am right now: [Drop photo of your levain or current dough state] My levain is ready and I'm mixing the sourdough version with toasted black sesame this morning. If you want to follow my pace, here's roughly when I'll hit each stage: 🥣 Fermentolyse: 8:00 AM 🧂 Add salt: 9:00 AM 🔄 First coil + seeds: 9:30 AM 🔄 Second coil: 10:00 AM 🔄 Third coil: 10:30 AM 🌡️ Bulk finish: 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM ✂️ Pre-shape: 1:00 PM 🪢 Final shape: 1:30 PM ❄️ Cold retard: 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM 🔥 Bake: 6:00 PM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠️ Your timeline may run faster or slower depending on your kitchen temperature. Don't chase mine. Watch your dough. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 A Few Quick Reminders For Today 🧂 The dough is going to look like it's falling apart after the salt. That's normal. Keep working it. It'll come back together. 💧 At 80% hydration, wet hands are your friend. Floured hands work against you. Keep a bowl of water nearby. 🌻 If you're using sesame, sunflower, pepitas, or any seed besides poppy... Toast it first if you haven't already. Cool completely before folding it in. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 The Recipes Are Here 🥖 Sourdough:https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-sourdough-loaf 🥖 Yeasted:https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-yeasted-loaf ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🧡 For The New Bakers In The Room Welcome. You picked a good week to jump in. There's no wrong answer today. Bake what excites you.Ask whatever you need to ask.And don't apologize for being new. We were all new once. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 👇 Drop in below and tell us: 🥖 What you're baking

Tomorrow we bake. Here's everything you need to know before bed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1️⃣ Recipe Links (Final Versions) 🥖 Sourdough:https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-sourdough-loaf 🥖 Yeasted:https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-yeasted-loaf 📌 If you saw an earlier version with T55 as the default, the updated recipes now call for bread flour as the standard. If you only have all-purpose flour, drop the water by 5 to 10g and you'll be fine. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2️⃣ Tonight, Do This 🥣 Sourdough Track Build your levain at your usual ratio. If you mix later tonight, around 8 to 9 PM, it should peak around 5 to 7 AM tomorrow. Set it on the counter where you can see it in the morning. 🥖 Yeasted Track Mix your poolish tonight at 8 PM. ✔️ 90g flour✔️ 90g cold water✔️ A pinch (0.5g) instant yeast Cover loosely. By morning it'll be bubbly, slightly domed, and sweet-smelling. That's your engine for tomorrow's dough. 🌻 Both Tracks Toast your seeds tonight if you can. 🔥 Dry skillet🔥 Low heat ⏱️ Poppy or sesame: 2 to 3 minutes⏱️ Sunflower: 4 to 6 minutes Cool completely on a plate, then cover. Tomorrow they'll be ready when you need them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 3️⃣ About 80% Hydration 😅 If 80% scares you, drop to 75%. Use 30g less water in the final dough. Same recipe. Slightly tighter crumb. Much easier to handle. Nobody's going to know but you. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4️⃣ The Salt Moment 🧂 When you add the salt after fermentolyse, the dough is going to look like it's falling apart. Tearing. Lumpy. Separating in your hands. This is normal. Salt tightens gluten unevenly at first, then the dough comes back together stronger than before. Keep working it for 2 to 3 minutes. 📺 If you watched the video on this, you already know. If you didn't... go watch it now. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 5️⃣ Cold Kitchen? ❄️ If your kitchen is below 68°F, use the oven light trick:

We’re staying on the road we’ve been building together. Baguettes. Pretzel bread. The Foolproof Sourdough Loaf. And this Saturday, we’re going somewhere beautiful. ✨ Poppy seed bread. ✨ Two versions. ✨ One bake-along. 📌 Why two versions? Some of you are deep into sourdough and ready to push hydration. Some of you are still building your starter, or just want to bake bread this weekend without a multi-day commitment. This Saturday, both of you get to bake the same loaf alongside everyone else. 🥖 The Sourdough Version T55 French flour and a touch of wholemeal at 80% hydration. The poppy seeds get folded in during the first coil, which laminates them through the crumb instead of mixing them away. The result is what you see in the photo: ✨ Open ✨ Airy ✨ Flecked with seed ✨ That nutty crunch you only get when the seeds keep their integrity This one teaches you: 🌾 How to handle higher hydration 🌾 How to time bulk fermentation in a warmer kitchen 🌾 Why we use 3.5 sets of coils instead of 4 (Hint: 80% hydration with wholemeal doesn’t want a fourth set. It tightens the crumb.) 📖 Full sourdough recipe in the Recipe Pantry: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-sourdough-loaf 🍞 The Yeasted Version Same flavor. Same beautiful crumb. Simpler timeline. ✅ Same-day bake ✅ No starter required We’ll use the same poppy seed lamination technique with a commercial yeast dough, so you still get that gorgeous seeded crumb without the multi-day fermentation. If you’ve been wanting to bake along but felt like sourdough was a barrier, this is your week. 📌 I’ll have the yeasted version uploaded to the Recipe Pantry by end of day today. Watch for the post. 🛒 What you need to know now: 🌾 Pick up poppy seeds this weekMost grocery stores carry them in the spice aisle. 🌾 If you can find T55 flour, grab it.If not, a strong all-purpose around 11–12% protein works beautifully.(King Arthur AP is the closest match.)