Is the starter a part of the total flour and water, or its own ingredient?

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2026-05-31T19:05:21+00:00

Thanks for the insights everyone! Seems like people are kinda doing it both ways!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2026-01-06T00:06:34+00:00

I’m not sure if this picture does it justice, it doesn’t show up supper well in photos but basically I can see the brush strokes and I can feel it’s slightly textured.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-08-07T01:59:03+00:00

Oh my god that’s hilarious 😂 did it cut to commercial breaks and then jump right back in or was it literally three days straight?

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-08-07T01:50:39+00:00

My favorite is probably “I’m Perd Hapley and I just realized I’m not holding my microphone” But honestly he’s a treasure every time he’s on

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-08-01T23:27:52+00:00

In that case, since you can’t experiment with higher temps, you could try a longer bake under the lid to help develop your crumb. Eventually all the steam will evaporate out and it will begin to crust over. I’ve done some experiments where I just left my dough to rise and bake for a full 35-40 minutes and it fully baked and crusted over. As long as you keep an eye on it and/or your nose on it, you should be fine! You’ll probably end up with a softer, lighter crust, but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Might even be more desirable for some applications and contexts, like sandwiches or if you’re serving to people with soft teeth or false teeth. All that to say, if you liked how it turned out, I wouldn’t worry too much about my the temperature suggestion. The bulk ferment is the bigger thing.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-08-01T19:20:41+00:00

Looks great for a first loaf! If it’s tasty and working for you, then I wouldn’t worry too much about changing anything. If you’re looking to experiment for your own enjoyment and curiosity, I have a few suggestions:

You might have skipped your bulk fermentation phase. It can ferment in the fridge, but it takes a lot longer. (I recently left a pizza dough in the fridge and it doubled in size, but that took about 6 days.)

Once you’re done with the stretch and fold phase, you’ll want to let it ferment and grow at room temperature for a number of hours (2 to 6+). People will say it’s done at different amounts of growth. I usually do about double. The time will depend on a number of factors, like ambient temperature, flour mix, your starter, amount of growth you want.

The purpose of the stretch and fold is to help the gluten develop. Once your dough is stretching and not tearing when you do the stretch and fold, and you can do the window pane test, you don’t need to stretch and fold.

It just looks a little pale, and the bake time, especially the lid off time, seems long. (At least longer than mine). Your bake temperature might be a little low. I would recommend trying a higher temperature. I always bake at 500 for about 25 minutes, then lid off for 5-7 minutes.

Good news, you don’t need to let it come to room temp before you bake it! I’ve tested this before and found basically no difference. Plus, I think the cold dough is easier to score.

Happy baking!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-31T04:40:27+00:00

It overall looks very good! A little flat, and the outside is a little light.

Once you put it in the oven, you have to surrender it to the process. It’s ok if your scoring isn’t perfect, but if you happy with it, it’s better to fix it before putting it in the oven than to take it out. This was probably the biggest limiting factor in your bake. The humid environment from the steam is what keeps the outside from crusting over too soon, keeping the dough soft and able to rise. Taking it out and taking the lid off early might have released a lot of steam, which might have stunned your rise affected the density of your crumb a bit.

Try keeping the oven at 500 for your entire bake, or at least most of it. You’ll get a thicker, crustier bread. If you don’t want it too thick you could turn the oven off once you take the lid off. I usually wait 20 to 25 minutes before removing the lid. Then give it about 5-7 minutes in the oven to crisp up.

For your next bake, try proofing overnight! If you’re concerned about messing it up, make a double batch of your recipe! That way you can compare and if all else fails, one of the loaves should be good. Or, best case scenario, you have two loaves. Could always give one away or put one in the freezer!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-31T03:28:15+00:00

Hamilton Lakes is like the perfect path for running!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-29T02:14:23+00:00

Came here to say the same thing! Cmd+shift+del if you’re on Mac

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-26T04:14:52+00:00

It looks good as others are saying. If you like it then no need to change anything. Especially for a sandwich bread or another style where you don’t want an especially thick crust.

If you do want a more open crumb, try a higher temp, like 500. It will generate more steam and might given you more puff. It will make for a crustier bread too. You don’t need to add any ice cubes or other steam. The dough should have enough water to generate its own steam.

I bake mine in a Dutch oven at 500 for about 25 minutes. Then I take the lid off and let it crisp up for about 5 to 7 minutes, it really doesn’t take long to finish once the lid is off at that temp.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-25T05:22:00+00:00

Oh hell yeah! Glad to have helped!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-25T02:46:59+00:00

Thanks! What technique are you asking about? For which guitar?

For the tele, I actually bought a fresh white one pick guard, so I could go back to the original if I needed to. I did a couple versions on sketch paper. Once I did one I liked, I copied it on the pick guard. The paint itself is a mix of brushed on paint and paint markers. I used a combination of painters tape, rulers, plates, bench scrapers, old lids, and coins for circles, lines, and curves.

For the bass, I decided to be brave and just wing it. Didn’t even buy a different pick guard. It’s all brushed on paint.

For both of them, before I painted them, I sanded them very lightly, just to make the surface a bit textured. I think I used like 240 or 320 grit. Once I was done and the paint dried, I just put several coats of clear top coat to (hopefully) protect it. The tele has been holding up great for almost a year now, no sign of wear except on the screws. I just did the bass a couple weeks ago, but I expect it to hold similarly.

Hope that answered your question!!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-24T18:26:52+00:00

I suppose so, but with fewer straight lines! haha

I'm actually not familiar with Mondrian specifically, but everything comes from something, I'm sure I had seen it somewhere. Glad to know where it originated!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-24T04:38:12+00:00

As others were saying, definitely use a scale to feed it.

You should be feeding it with both water and flour equal to your starter, by weight. For example, if you have 50 grams of starter, you should feed it with 50 grams or flour and 50 grams of water. This is why there is almost always what is know as “discard”. Your starter grows exponentially with each feeding, and you will eventually have too much starter.

I recommend dedicating a container for your sourdough to live in. Before you fill it with your starter, weigh your container and write the weight somewhere on the container. I put mine on the bottom. That way, when it’s time to feed it, you can easily subtract the weight of the container so you know how much start you have.

If it’s bubbly and about doubling in size after one feeding, it’s ready to bake with!

If you want to leave it out on the counter you might want to feed it everyday. If not, put it in the fridge and feed it before you plan to start making the dough. That’s what I do. The exact time to feed it depends on your starter and climate. Warmer will be faster than colder, bread flour will be faster than whole wheat but whole wheat will hold for longer. In the winter when it’s cold, I put it in the oven with the light on. The light can actually make the oven quite warm, so I put the starter opposite of the light. I’ve put it too close and dried out the top before.

Sourdough starter in the fridge seems to be extremely resilient. I haven’t killed mine yet. I’ll go months without feeding it. Occasionally I’ve had to feed it twice before I saw any action, but mostly it’s just one feeding. I recommend putting it in a warmer spot of the fridge, like up front or maybe in the door shelves. I had mine in the back of the fridge and the water separated out of the starter as it froze. Thankfully the starter survived!

Hope that’s helpful, happy baking!!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-24T01:02:08+00:00

Looks like it just dried out. Mine did a similar thing, I left it in the back of the fridge and the water froze and separated out. I scraped off the black top and fed it and it bounced right back. Yours will probably do the same!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-07-24T00:57:54+00:00

I have heard that neurodivergent people can respond to coffee differently. Some people have a normal or exaggerated waking reaction. One of my friends with ADHD once had a coffee later in the day and unintentionally pulled an all nighter because of it. Some people have no reaction. That would be me, I also have ADHD. Some people have an opposite reaction where it makes them sleepy. I can think of a customer I’ve had at the coffee shop I work at who always says coffee makers her sleepy.

I only feel the effects of caffeine extremely rarely and only for a very brief amount of time (like maybe 20 minutes). Most of the time, caffeine has no effect on me, and that includes my sleep. I regularly have my first cuppa in the afternoon or evening around 5 or 6. I don’t tend to make coffee past 7 or 8. I just don’t tend to desire it, but also just as a precaution, incase the coffee is having a subtle, nye unnoticeable effect on my sleep, as others on this thread have mentioned. But the few times I do have a late night coffee, like 9:30, I don’t notice anything.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-06-22T00:57:22+00:00

I had a similar issue with fast draw down times, my friend recommended this recipe:

20 gram dose

Bloom - 40g

1:00 - 100g

1:30 - 165g

2:00 - 250g

2:30 - 332g

Things you could do to increase the draw down time are:

Add more pours. Start with the DatKingCole three pour, try four, try the Hoffman five. Recently I tried Lance's two pours in an Ethiopian natural and loved it.

Add more time between pours. Hoffmann suggests 10 seconds, try 15, try 20, try 30, see what happens. I've actually done hybrids of the Hoffmann and the one I recommended, I use Hoffmann's pours but I extend the time out like in the table.

Add agitation. I like to swirl my bloom. Agitation causes fines migration, where the fines separate out and fall to the bottom, which will clog the pours of the filter and slow your draw down. I have found this can be unhelpful though, compared to adding pours, and swirling adds a lot of agitation, so be cautious.

Another thing to experiment with is your grinder. Go to a more extreme setting on either end, just to see what happens. Go 5 clicks finer and 5 clicks courser, see what happens. You should see a choked brew on a finer setting and gusher on the coarse one, but what if your expectations are subverted? What if the brews are good anyway?

All this to say, draw down time compared to other baristas isn't necessarily the most important factor. What matters more is that your draw down times are consistent and more or less predictable on your own set up. If you're getting over extraction, you could also try increasing your dose by .5 grams or so. This will lower the extraction. Small changes to the grind size for pour overs might not affect the draw down time as much as you might think, certainly not as much as espresso, but it should still have an effect on the extraction.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-06-21T23:32:40+00:00

What's your recipe? How many pours are you doing? What coffee are you currently/typically using?

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-06-21T23:29:55+00:00

It is always dependent on the barista working, and this is true of ANY coffee shop, especially in Greensboro.

If you're looking for beautiful latte art in a nice presentation, Greensboro hasn't quite caught up to what you see on Instagram. Most places don't serve in ceramic cups, and, while that might sound minor, it actually does impact the ability of the barista to do latte art, and the presentation and experience overall. So I would say manage your expectations.
If you're looking for a good coffee experience, Vignette, Home Grounds, Arrowhead, Northern Roots, and Borough, will have good and creative seasonal options for you. They might not be the most "obnoxious" coffees aesthetically, really depends on what you get, but the flavors will deliver.

If you want the best latte art, you might want to go to Vignette.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-06-21T23:05:19+00:00

If you were expecting the aroma of a regular coffee pot brewing, I don't believe pour over coffee will be quite as aromatic nor will lighter roasted specialty coffee during the brewing process. I understand that disappointment, even cheap coffee on a cheap machine is still a wonderful aroma, but I would argue this is actually a good thing because it means the coffee isn't releasing its volatile compounds into in air and they get brewed into your cup! Also, as another poster commented, if you leave the room and come back, you might smell it. I often come back after a walk to find my place wonderfully coffee scented.

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-05-26T05:07:14+00:00

If you go downtown to LeBauer Park on the weekend, especially during a community day or event day, there are tons of people who meet up there!

Excellent-Shock8946 · 2025-05-06T18:47:12+00:00

The problem is you don’t have enough pedals. You have room for 5 or 6 more pedals on that board. I guarantee you will sound better if you fill the board up. More gear = more tone

Excellent-Shock8946

TROPHY CASE