essay · long-form16 min
The Myth of the 24-hour Cold Retard
After 600 logged bakes across nine starters, I'm ready to say it: the long cold ferment is overrated, and we have mistaken sourness for depth. Here is the data.
Hydration ratios. Starter genealogies. Flour protein percentages and the way the kitchen smells at 4 a.m. when something is finally rising. Bakers have always kept notebooks. This one's just a little easier to share.
Some families pass down jewelry. Mine passes down recipes. For as long as I can remember, my mom and I have traded them — measurements yelled across the kitchen, photos sent at strange hours, recipe cards tucked into birthday envelopes. When I got into sourdough, she was the first person I called.
"Every loaf I bake has
a margin note from her
in it somewhere."
Cooking is the language we kept speaking when life got busy. I'd send her a voice note about a gummy crumb at 11 p.m.; she'd send back a photo of her starter at 7 a.m. We have made each other better bakers. More to the point, we have made each other.
This site is what those phone calls would look like if we wrote them down. Yes, it's a database — pH and hydration and protein percentages and all the obsessive bits we love. But it's also a place to keep track of who taught us what. A place where every recipe has a person attached to it.
I built it with her in mind. And for everyone who has ever traded a recipe with someone they love.
847 documented strains. Pick a name, see how it behaves, save it to your shelf.
Sketched from 12,400 logged bakes. Real numbers. Real loaves.
| temp | duration | notes |
|---|---|---|
| 18°C / 64°F | 8h 30m | slow & complex |
| 20°C / 68°F | 6h 15m | balanced |
| 22°C / 72°F | 5h 00m | balanced |
| 24°C / 75°F | 4h 15m | just right |
| 26°C / 79°F | 3h 30m | watch closely |
| 28°C / 82°F | 2h 50m | fast / risky |
| 30°C / 86°F | 2h 15m | too hot — slow it down |
Everything I've baked with, plus everything you've sent me. 312 mills. 87 grain varieties.
| variety | mill / region | protein | ash | best for | my notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 65 (T65) | Moulin Bourgeois Verdelot, FR |
11.8% | 0.65% | country loaves | favorite | |
| Tipo 00 Manitoba | Mulino Marino Cossano, IT |
14.5% | 0.55% | high-hydration | in stock | |
| Bread Flour, Sifted | Cairnspring Mills Burlington, WA |
13.0% | 0.58% | open crumb | mom approved | |
| Whole Spelt | Roggenkampe Detmold, DE |
12.5% | 1.85% | blends, levain | in stock | |
| Dark Rye, Stoneground | Hayden Mills Queen Creek, AZ |
10.5% | 1.95% | pumpernickel | in stock | |
| Einkorn, Whole | Janie's Mill Ashkum, IL |
14.0% | 1.70% | heritage loaves | limited | |
| High-Extraction Yecora | Central Milling Logan, UT |
13.5% | 0.95% | country, baguette | in stock | |
| Khorasan (Kamut®) | Big Sky Organic Bozeman, MT |
14.2% | 1.65% | golden crumb | in stock |
Calculators, planners, and little fixes — built because we needed them ourselves.
Type in your flour weight, get a full breakdown — water, salt, levain, multi-flour blends. The math your grandma did in her head.
open it →Tell us when you want bread out of the oven. We'll work backwards through retard, shape, bulk, and feed times based on your kitchen temp.
plan a bake →Upload a cross-section and we'll score the alveoli, flag irregularities, and tell you what likely went sideways. Gummy strips, flying crusts, all of it.
upload a slice →Photos, weights, temps, notes. Watch your starter's behavior change with the seasons. Export to CSV. Compare against the community.
start logging →312 documented loaf failures with cause and cure. Search by symptom — dense crumb, no spring, sour smell, blistered crust, gummy interior.
browse atlas →Convert between baker's percentages and absolute weights. Scale up to commercial. Swap flours and recompute hydration automatically.
open it →Essays, methods, profiles. Things bakers wanted to write down.
After 600 logged bakes across nine starters, I'm ready to say it: the long cold ferment is overrated, and we have mistaken sourness for depth. Here is the data.
A gentler approach to lamination that keeps the gas pockets you fought to build during bulk.
A heritage hard red wheat from California's Central Valley — protein high, gluten quirky, oven spring stunning.