Okay, honest question. What got you into sourdough in the first place? Was it a loaf you tasted somewhere and couldn't stop thinking about? A friend who made it look easy? A pandemic rabbit hole you never climbed out of? 😄 What keeps you coming back?

Good morning, BBW community! If you just found your way in here — welcome. 🙌 I'm so glad you're here. This is a community of real home bakers following one simple method. No noise, no conflicting advice, no pressure to be perfect. Before anything else, I'd love to know: Where are you in your sourdough journey right now? Drop one of these in the comments: - 🌱 Haven't started yet — just curious - 🫙 I have a starter but haven't baked yet - 🍞 I've baked before but something went wrong - 🙌 I'm baking regularly and want to go deeper And if you haven't started the free course yet — it's inside the Classroom tab. That's your first step. Everything else builds from there.

Show us what came out of your oven this week. First loaf, tenth loaf, flat loaf, beautiful loaf — ALL of it counts here. Every bake is data. Every loaf is progress. Drop your photo below. Tell us one thing you'd do differently next time (or one thing you nailed).

It cares about your kitchen temperature, your flour, your starter activity, and your hydration. A dough that finishes its first rest (aka bulk fermentation, first rise) in 4 hours in a 78° kitchen might take 7+ hours in a 68° kitchen. Neither is wrong. They're just different conditions. The skill isn't following a timer. It's learning to read your dough. And that's actually a learnable skill — which means you can get there. So tell me — which of these feels most familiar right now? 👉 "My dough has been sitting for hours and I have no idea if it's done." 👉 "I'm not sure what over-fermented vs. under-fermented even looks like." 👉 "I just follow the time and hope for the best." Drop your answer below — even if it's just a number of hours or a quick "that last one, definitely." There are no wrong answers here. This is exactly the kind of thing we work through together. (And if you want the full breakdown — what to look for, what to adjust, and how to finally stop second-guessing your dough — it's all inside the Sourdough Foundations module in BBW. It's the explains Sourdough Condition that makes everything else click.) 👉 Learn more → www.thebreadandbutterway.com/membership

How is your sourdough starter? A healthy starter should be doubling in size after feeding, have a domed top, smell tangy (not nail-polish-remover sharp), and be bubbly (big & small) all the way through. If yours isn't doing all of that yet — that's okay. Most starter problems come down to three things: temperature, feeding ratio, or flour type. Drop a photo of your starter below and tell me: - How old is it? - What flour are you using? - Where are you keeping it? Let's troubleshoot together. 👇