Hit my 1,000th loaf of sourdough yesterday and it finally felt right

I've been baking sourdough for about three years now, and yesterday I pulled loaf number 1,000 out of the oven. It came out perfect, golden crust and open crumb, which never happened with my first 500 loaves. Has anyone else tracked their bakes and noticed a huge jump in consistency after a certain number?

2 comments

2 Comments

scott.drew1mo ago

1,000 loaves is a lot of flour. I get that you finally hit your groove, but I think you're overthinking it. To me sourdough is more about the process than the final score. I stopped counting after maybe 200 loaves. Each one is different anyways, somedays it works great other days it flops. That's just bread doing bread stuff.

miles2791mo ago

Counting loaves is like counting your mistakes. At 200 you probably stopped because you realized the dough doesn't care about your scorecard. Mine flops hard sometimes, last week I had a brick that could break a window. Other days it's a masterpiece I want to frame. Maybe the real score is how many times you eat the failures anyway.