Before your first loaf ever hits the oven, there's one thing you need to understand: bread rises because of gas. That's it. The question is just where that gas comes from.
Baking powder gives you an instant chemical reaction. Commercial yeast gives you a reliable biological one. Sourdough gives you a living ecosystem with wild yeast and bacteria working together.
Same mechanism. Different tools. Different trade-offs.
That's the whole lesson in Week 1 of the Baker's Fundamentals classroom, and I turned it into a video so you can see it laid out clearly before you ever touch a bag of flour.
Watch it, then tell me: which path are you on right now?
Drop it in the comments. Self-rising, yeasted, or sourdough. No wrong answers.
This is Week 1 of the Road to Sourdough series. We're building the foundation first, because bakers who understand the why don't panic when something goes wrong.