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:

🍞 Last night I posted about my starter experiment water versus pineapple juice, the scale that died at midnight, and the volume measure I had to fall back on. You followed along all day. The coil folds, the toasting, the shaping, the pre-shape, the bench rest, the final shape, the bake. This is the loaf. 🌾 The Loaf Poppy seed sourdough from the Recipe Pantry, with one swap: I toasted black sesame seeds instead of poppy and folded them in at the first coil. The water-fed starter from the experiment is what raised it. The pineapple-fed jar got set aside. Same recipe. Different seed. Toasted, not raw. That's the whole change. 🔥 What I Got 🔹 Bloom that opened clean and proud where the score caught 🔹 A crumb that's open, glossy, evenly developed, with sesame distributed all the way through 🔹 Decorative scoring around the perimeter that held its shape because I kept those cuts shallow and the main score deep 🔹 A crust that's deep amber where it should be and lighter where the flour protected it 🔹 The kind of ear that makes you pause for a second before you slice it 🧪 The Lesson Worth Naming The high hydration sounds intimidating until you remember the wholemeal in this recipe is thirsty. It needs that water. Drop the hydration and you starve the dough. That's the whole reason the recipe is built the way it's built. And the toasted black sesame is the move I'd recommend to anyone who wants to take this loaf up a level. Two to three minutes in a dry skillet, shaking constantly, until you smell them. Then fold them in at the first coil like the recipe says. The toast wakes up the oil in the seed, which is where the flavor lives. Black sesame in particular has more oil than poppy, so the difference is dramatic. 📌 What Made This Bake Work 🔹 A clean, water-fed starter at peak (the right jar from yesterday's experiment) 🔹 Toasted seeds folded in at the first coil for crunch and flavor 🔹 3.5 coil folds, not 4, because at 75% hydration with wholemeal in the mix, four is too many

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.)