I'm bake! I mean back! Pun intended! Took a little break to get some family time. Baked my Foccica sandwich loaf today!

This is the question I get more than any other. It shows up in the feed almost every week, usually with a photo of a jar and a sentence that starts with "I've been feeding it for two weeks and..." So I made a video about it. Here's what I'll say up front: a starter that isn't doubling is not automatically a dead starter. Most of the time it's alive and doing exactly what the conditions are telling it to do. The problem is almost never the flour or the water. It's usually something quieter than that. Watch it, then come back and tell me which one you recognized in your own jar. https://youtu.be/nTxWfRwevd4 If your starter has been stubborn, post a photo in the comments. Tell me your feeding ratio, your flour, and roughly how warm your kitchen sits. That's usually all I need to spot it. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥 Like and subscribe while you're there. It helps us more than you know.

Making the yeasted rustic ciabatta today from the pantry. Added 100 g of grated cheddar cheese during the 2nd coil fold. Serving with red beans and rice tonight.

Thirty to sixty seconds a side. It seems too short to matter. Here's what's happening in there. Boiling water gelatinizes the starch on the surface of the dough and sets it into a skin before the bagel ever sees the oven. That skin does two jobs. It gives you the glossy, slightly leathery crust, and it caps oven spring so the bagel stays dense instead of puffing up into a roll. Longer boil gives you chewier and denser. Shorter boil gives you softer and lighter. Go the full sixty seconds a side if you want deli texture. One more thing. Your water needs a hard rolling boil, not a simmer. A lazy pot gives you a pale, dull crust.

Crumb shot!😍