🌙 Last night around midnight I went to feed my starters for a little experiment I've been wanting to run. Stiff starter, two jars, side by side. One fed with water, one fed with pineapple juice. Same flour, same ratios, same temperature, same everything except the liquid. Except my kitchen scale had other plans. ⚖️ Scale Trouble The display started flashing "unstable." Then the numbers just started running. 12g. 47g. 3g. 89g. Whether there was anything on the scale or not. I sat there for a few minutes trying to coax it back to life, recalibrate, reset, the whole routine. Nothing. So I did what bakers did before digital scales existed. I went by volume. A quarter cup of liquid in each jar (water in one, pineapple juice in the other), and a half cup of flour each. Stirred them stiff, capped them, and went to bed. 🔬 What I Found This Morning Nine and a half hours later, both jars had risen to about the same height. Domed caps, pulled away from the sides of the glass, looking active. From the front, they looked like twins. But from the top, the story changed. 🔹 The pineapple jar (left): glossy, slack surface. Bubbles broken open. Bigger, more open holes throughout the body when you look through the side of the glass. The structure had given way. 🔹 The water jar (right): tighter, drier surface. You could still see the swirl pattern from how I mixed it. Smaller, more uniform bubbles. The structure was still holding. 🧠 Why This Happens Pineapple juice brings two things plain water doesn't: sugar and acid. Sugar gives the wild yeast a faster food source, so fermentation accelerates. Acid drops the pH and starts breaking down the gluten structure. Together they push a starter past peak faster and degrade its structure even at stiff hydration. Same rise height. Completely different internal behavior. 📌 The Takeaway Pineapple juice is a great tool for waking up a brand new starter in the first few days. The acid suppresses the bad bacteria long enough for your wild yeast to get established. But once you have a healthy, mature starter, pineapple juice isn't doing you any favors. It just accelerates fermentation and breaks down the structure you've worked to build.

Yesterday I pulled Vitale out of the refrigerator covered in hooch after almost three weeks of neglect. Poured off the liquid, kept 30 grams of the dregs, and fed her as a stiff starter: 30 grams starter, 100 grams water, 200 grams flour. Twenty four hours later, she doubled. She even passed the float test. Am I baking with her today? No. I want to see three consistent rises before I trust her in a loaf. That’s the standard. One good rise is encouraging. Three is reliable. But here’s where it gets interesting. Now that she’s responding, I’m running an experiment for anyone whose starter just won’t get going. I split her into two identical jars, same measurements, same flour, same conditions. The only difference: one gets fed with water, the other gets fed with pineapple juice. The pineapple juice trick came up during our live chat last weekend. @Candi Brown-McGriff mentioned it to a member who was struggling to get her starter off the ground. The science is simple. Pineapple juice sits around pH 3.5. That acidity gives your lactobacillus a head start and makes life difficult for the bad bacteria and mold that often stall out a new starter. So we’re going to watch them side by side and see what happens. Starters are resilient. They come back. They want to be alive. Your job is to give them what they need. Stay with me. The results from the two jar comparison are coming next. Perfection is not required. Progress is. ~ Henry ⭐🔥

Every week, someone in here posts a photo of their dough and asks the same question: “Is this right? It seems really wet.” The answer is almost always yes. The fear is universal. And the instinct to fix it by adding flour is what kills the bake. 🥖 This video is for everyone who learned to bake on sandwich bread and dinner rolls, then hit a wall when they tried ciabatta, focaccia, or rustic sourdough. The dough was never wrong. The expectation was. In this video, I walk through: 💧 The hydration spectrum and why the rules change at 75% and up 🔥 Why higher hydration is actually more forgiving on bake day, not less 🙌 The “wet hands, not floured hands” rule 🌀 Coil folds vs. stretch and folds and why it matters for your crumb 🛠️ The three tools that make wet dough manageable This is the foundation for everything we’re baking Saturday and beyond. 🎥 Watch it here:[drop YouTube link] Then meet me back here. Saturday, we’re baking a poppy seed sourdough at 80% hydration. Two paths available: sourdough or yeasted. Pick the one that fits your week. 👇 What’s the highest hydration you’ve taken on so far? Drop it in the comments. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥 𝘿𝙤 𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙗𝙞𝙜 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙪𝙗𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪.

The foundation of great bread is set hours before you ever touch a banneton. It starts right after fermentolyse. In today's video, I'm walking you through the stage almost nobody films. What dough actually looks like the moment fermentolyse ends. Why I dimple the salt in instead of dumping it on top. And how the Rubaud method builds real strength without beating the dough into submission. If your dough has ever felt weak, sticky, tight, or impossible to handle, this is the stage you've been skipping past. What's in the video: 🥣 What fermentolyse actually does (and why it changes everything) 🧂 Why I dimple the salt in by hand 💪 The Rubaud method, slowed down so you can copy it 🌾 What properly hydrated dough should look and feel like 👀 The visual cues that tell you your dough is developing right This is part of the Foolproof Sourdough Loaf process. The whole point of the series is to teach the why, not just hand you a step list. When you understand what the dough is telling you, recipes stop being instructions and start being a conversation. Drop a comment if you've struggled with weak or sticky dough at this stage. I want to know where you're getting stuck. Here's the recipe: https://skoo.ly/foolproof-sourdough Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥 𝘿𝙤 𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙗𝙞𝙜 𝙛𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙪𝙗𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪.

A lot of bakers use “starter” and “levain” like they mean the same thing. They don’t. Your starter is the culture you maintain. Your levain is the portion you build specifically for the dough you’re making today. That one distinction changes how you think about fermentation. 🫙 Starter = maintained culture🥖 Levain = freshly built preferment for a specific bake Why does it matter? Because building a levain gives you: - better timing - stronger fermentation - more predictable results - better control over flavor and dough strength This is where baking starts shifting from “following recipes” to actually understanding what the dough is doing. Small distinction. Big breakthrough. Perfection is not required. Progress is.