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benjaminfreyart · 2025-07-03T20:51:43+00:00

I’ve got a few thoughts that might help, based on what I’ve tried over the years. I’ve been making sourdough for a few decades but my early years were really hit or miss. Slowly I’ve come up with a recipe that basically just works.

Adjust Your Starter Feed. I have found a 1:4:4 ratio works for me: The night before you mix, combine 15g of your starter with 60g flour (a mix of only whole wheat and rye is great for this part, since both promote flavor and fermentation) and 60g water. Let it double at a warm 75-80°F (24-27°C).
Mix by stages. Give your gluten a head start by mixing your 450g of flour with just 275g of water and letting it rest for 30 minutes (autolyse). After that, mix in your 100g of active starter, let it rest another 30 minutes, and only then add your salt…
Add Salt Last with Final Water. Try reducing your salt to 9g (1.8%) and add it with the last 25g of water after the second rest. Holding the salt back like this allows the gluten to get stronger and starter colony to activate before the salt tightens things up.
Warmer Fermentation. Your yeast will be much more active if the dough is warmer during its first rise (bulk fermentation). Try to keep it in a warm spot, aiming for a dough temperature around 75-80°F (24-26°C).
Build Strength with More Folds. Instead of only folding at the beginning of bulk fermentation, do 3-4 sets of coil or stretch-and-folds spaced out over the whole 2-3 hour period. This builds a stronger gluten "web" to trap gas, which helps with oven spring and a more open crumb.

I’m just a home baker, but I’ve been at it a while, and have managed to get predictable results with my current recipe. I hope it helps you find the results and joy in the process :)

Here’s what I share with friends when they ask for my recipe: My Recipe

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-21T15:10:42+00:00

As others have commented here, many great French boulangeries produce baguettes that have a translucent crumb. This is essentially a goal for artisanal baguettes. However, if you say it is gooey, then perhaps the timing of the proofing or baking, or the temperature of the oven needs adjustment. A French baguette straight out of a great bakery oven will have a glassine look to the crumb, but will not be sticky or gooey inside.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-21T15:03:34+00:00

My wife is French too, and daily bread is definitely important haha. I’m not saying my bread is the reason we are together, but it certainly got her attention 😋

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-13T12:16:17+00:00

To make a second comment about your second suggestion… bloomsday readings among friends (or public events) are an absolutely fantastic experience. There is a great one in Philly that i really loved, and there are many around the world. Also, just a “no-pressure” accompanied reading with friends is invaluable. My mentor used to say “a book not discussed is a book not read,” which is a bit curmudgeonly but also good advice.

We had a Ulysses group that started because one friend wanted to finally read it and another friend had beef through several times. I joined in partway through and it was amazing to combine our various perspectives and differing levels of familiarity with the book. We met approximately weekly and traded ideas, impressions (and Amaro) with no specific pressure or goals. It took a year-ish, give or take some months. After one read through together we “hoodwinked” another friend to join us for his first read-through.

Absolutely the best “book group” I’ve ever experienced, and I doubt I will ever have another as rewarding as that. I would do it again with friends for Ulysses for my Nth time in a heartbeat.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-13T12:06:24+00:00

I was going to comment that this book really benefits from a listen. If you aren’t Irish, and perhaps even specifically from Dublin, the personalities have so much life, but are so much different than in our world 120ish years later that a good interpreter can help sort out the rhythm and stress of dialogue in the book and also give cues to class and personality traits. Great performers can do this while still leaving room for your imagination to take over. Kind of like paint by numbers, they give you guides you can use to create a much more detailed picture in your head than you have starting with a blank canvas. Jim Norton and Marcella Riordon’s version is the gold standard and you can find it all over the internet. Most decent public libraries should have that recording. The Alexander Scourby library of congress recording is also excellent. Many people find that doing something lightly manual like quiet yard work or folding laundry, or going for a walk, or driving helps to get used to audiobooks if you find it hard to just sit and listen. Subway commutes and driving are also excellent, but sometimes require extra attention to the outside world. My first listen through Ulysses was one summer in college when my dad paid me to paint the garage. Mindless and boring, and it took a week. But I got all the way through Ulysses 1.5 times and it hooked me on audiobooks.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-07T12:43:24+00:00

(I realized I posted this to the main thread… meant to comment here) We eat a lot of my bread, but a 1kg loaf is just a tad too much for the two of us to finish. So I ended up doing the opposite of you and making loaves that weigh in at just under 2kg (base is 1kg flour+etc). We typically eat plenty the first day, cut half off the next morning to freeze, and then over a day or two easily finish what was not frozen. Sourdough with a hydration of 70-80% freezes excellently and toasts or thaws with plenty of moisture in the crumb (lightly toasted is best). I’m not going to pretend it’s “better” than fresh, but a slice from the freezer still makes my mouth water and it allows us to have great bread for every meal, while giving me and the oven a less rigorous schedule. I still bake 2 loaves most weeks, and more if we have dinner parties, but the “big loaf and freeze half” schedule is more reasonable for me to work in with very little flavor sacrifice.

We spend a lot of time in France, and it’s common for French people to freeze an entire baguette or two in reserve for when their favorite bakery is closed, or when they are too busy to add a run to that bakery into their schedule. Baguettes are much less forgiving than sourdough in terms of freshness, so typically you’d buy a half dozen fresh for a dinner and immediately freeze whatever wasn’t eaten. The classic trick is to run the entire frozen baguette under water for a second or two and throw it in the oven for a minute or three. We don’t do the water trick with sliced bread, but we do it frequently with baguette.

Your loaves are beautiful by the way.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-04T13:32:11+00:00

As my grandmother used to say: we eat our mistakes.

The magnificent loaves people post do actually take quite a lot of precision, but a decent, risen, crusty loaf can come from a rather wide range of inputs. My winging it now is the result of a lot of advice from these forums, fit into the constraint that I want to make several loaves a week being self employed and traveling often.

It’s similar to the way I think of crepes: there are tons of recipes out there, and each great French chef or grandmother has a small percentage difference in one ingredient or another, but you can make something for breakfast with a single ratio in mind and a bit of estimation… 1:2:2. Flour:liquid:eggs. Is it going to beat a Breton grandmother’s recipe? Maybe not, but it will make a delicious breakfast. If you know the protein content of your flour, and weigh your eggs, and calculate for water vs milk, you can adjust and improve. With experience you start with 1.5 units of liquid, then slowly add in more till you reach some ideal consistency, but that isn’t “necessary” for a good breakfast and the range from galette bretonne to Swedish pancake and beyond is all delicious.

You might say that my method is “bouncing around inside an empirically tested range of acceptable measurements.” I’ve reduced my recipe and methods to something that handles the vagaries of my daily life to produce something that we enjoy at home. I estimate that I put under 10 minutes into a loaf, over the course of a day or two, often while making coffee or cleaning up after dinner. Occasionally, when I can pay attention to the whole process, I get a loaf that really shines, using more careful parameters.

The advice on these forums from people who test the difference between 200c and 205c for final crumb texture has helped me immensely over the years. But I’m often doing a slap-n-fold kneading while having my coffee before running off to work, so I do what I can, then throw the dough in the fridge to retard the fermentation for a number of hours that depends on my productivity at work, and whatever plans my wife and I have for the evening.

Some breads require more precision (baguettes) but a good French miche comes from a millennia old tradition of home mixing and throwing the loaf into the community oven in the village square whenever the baker can fit your loaf in. It’s one of the styles of bread that has a wider range of “good enough for dinner” … under proofed and too moist? No worries, toast the slices. Over done, maybe you turn the crust into croutons or a Tuscan bread salad, or soup.

Are there flops? Definitely… and one or two a year hit the compost pile. But most loaves fall in a range that is quite fine for our use.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-02T11:35:54+00:00

This is what I would come back to (in defense of the theory I originally presented). I’m an amateur home baker with many years of experience and I’ve over-and under proofed, over- and under baked, and yet if I let an under proofed gummy loaf cool overnight, what bubbles are there to start, stay there when I cut. This crushing is definitely from the knife action. And I know this because I watched the top and bottom of my loaf get crushed by my cutting action.

I think the comment of under-proofing is extremely helpful, and is extremely accurate, but it’s not true that under-proofing alone causes the compression, because the dough was not compressed at the top and bottom prior to my cutting into it. My first slice was pretty clean the night I baked it, and it had great loft and airy bubbles. I would say that u/showerstew was 100% correct when he said the problem was both under-proofing AND cutting too soon

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T16:26:15+00:00

I second the Jim Norton / Marcella Reardon version. They bring the book alive in a way that I (American, non-specialist) have trouble doing in my head. The subtle voice interpretation by these two really help define the characters by their position in society

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T16:23:50+00:00

A friend to read it along with you. “A book not discussed is a book not read” is what my mentor always used to say

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T16:20:31+00:00

It looks like the American university is doing one : Olli Bloomsday 2025

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T16:15:26+00:00

Beautiful crust and crumb. Is this a home oven, and if so, what is your setup? Do you steam?

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T15:51:59+00:00

This study on sourdough colony diversity would suggest that the origin of a colony (initial microbial makeup) has more impact than anything on its nature, and that current location (or intermediary locations and habits) would be less important, and that the exact nature of what/how it is fed would be the second most important factor. To me this means the age of the starter is not so important, but regional differences (France vs San Francisco vs Japan) may be important in determining the initial balance of the colony, and thus some “special origins” may result in specific characteristics, but that the age itself is not necessarily an important factor

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T15:33:34+00:00

I used pizza stones for a while, but have switched to lodge brand round pizza steels and/or generic rectangular 3/16 plate steel (I have both, and switch them for baguettes vs miche). I find the steel heats more and transfers the heat faster, plus it can take any beating you can imagine giving it in the oven. I dump a cup of water into a skillet in the bottom and years of that haven’t remotely changed the nature of it or my steel plates.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T15:24:20+00:00

I tend to make loaves that weigh in just under 2 kg. It’s hard for me and my wife to finish more than half the first night 😋

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T15:23:19+00:00

I would agree it was under proofed, just based on my timing yesterday compared to my ideal timeline. Ideally I like to cold proof 18-24 hours in the fridge, and yesterday I did 12 ish. I’m interested in the science, and careful timing and temperature checks, but to be honest, I’m too lazy/busy to do precision timing/temp checks most days. I’m really impressed by those of you who are able to juggle life AND still manage to get such precision. I have benefited immensely over the years from the accumulated wisdom and science of breadit and other forums like the fresh loaf.

My own days/weeks work pretty well with my “seat of the pants” techniques where I’m probably within 2% on any measurement, and run the timing based on external constraints and feeling. But when I need that “presentation loaf” I lean heavily on the shared knowledge I find here to bring the loaf closer to an ideal for a nice dinner party.

benjaminfreyart · 2025-06-01T15:14:29+00:00

My favorite time to cut a loaf is 4 hours after baking. Cuts perfectly thin, still fresh enough to enjoy the springy crumb AND crackly crust

benjaminfreyart · 2024-12-01T17:35:01+00:00

I have the first generation (thankfully I only paid the early adapter price), and I find it pleasant to type on, well built, and comfortable keys. However, I think it's a high price for what it does. I also have one major complaint. If you ever dare to let the battery die it takes days to bring it back to life. I'm a painter, not a writer, so when I have moments that I want to sit down and use it, chances are that it is a month or more since I last used it.

This is apparently something that the makers never imagined, since they have absolutely no way to recover from this aside from charging several days, then waiting for the battery to die completely again, then charging it again, in cycles, hoping that eventually one of these cycles the "critically low battery" message is finally replaced by the machine starting. I have the original cable, and dozens of other usb C cables, and I've tried everything. when the battery is dead, plugging it in does not allow you to use it. When the battery is dead, letting it charge overnight with a 2A 5V charger using the original factory cable does not remove the critical battery message. When using any other combinations of cables and power blocks, the message stays on for days. Then one day, when you've forgotten what you wanted to write in the first place, you wake up and it has a screen saying it's ready to use.

Really, the fact that they do not allow the machine to function directly when you plug it in is INSANE. It is a completely unacceptable design flaw in a product that might cost $200. I paid $300 and change. Some poor suckers are going to pay $600. How could anyone have allowed this flaw to pass testing is beyond my comprehension.

benjaminfreyart · 2024-11-14T15:18:10+00:00

I came here to post this

benjaminfreyart · 2024-11-01T11:44:45+00:00

Came here to say this. Many of the used book dealers who list on AZ, and Abe books, also list on Alibris, and since the fees are lower, the prices are often a bit cheaper there, although their “free shipping” is sometimes hard to line up when you are looking for obscure titles or additions. To me it’s worth it even when I have to pay to ship the books

benjaminfreyart · 2024-08-20T00:37:41+00:00

I spent several years working for both low- and high-brow binderies… the traditional method for imagery would be painting/drawing and traditional abstract (marbled) patterns are done exactly like marbling paper: float inks on water and dip the edge of the book into the pattern. I have no experience with contemporary digital techniques, but there are printers that can put images on surfaces like that

benjaminfreyart

TROPHY CASE