2025 Lessons I've Learned... and welcome, 2026!

Hi Early Risers,

Starting 2026 I just want to say THANK YOU. I strive to be authentic and helpful on my platform and I hope to continue to grow Substack to a place where I can stop pushing links on you and contribute to my family by follower funding. YOU are the reason I can even think of doing this, and YOU are what motivates me. It means SO much to read comments sharing how I’ve helped. Thank you endlessly for being a part of this community. That being said….

I’m not huge on New Year’s Resolutions as I never really follow through with them, and I really think humans can’t make big changes until some subconscious decision in my brain is reached and all of a sudden, I’m doing it. Do you feel that way? My husband will kindly mention the same habit I’ve formed that annoys him 20 times and I hear him, but it doesn’t really affect me until one day I find myself actually putting the pizza cutter in the same drawer as it always goes in. I never really thought to myself “I’m going to put that away in the RIGHT spot” but for some reason from then on, the voice in my head urges me to do it. Here are the ways my sourdough game evolved this year. These are things I pretty much always do.

• The way I feed my starter. This year I kept my starter at room temperature and a bit stiffer. If you can’t manage this, I understand. You do NOT have to keep your starter at room temp, and if you only bake occasionally, it can be too stressful to think about. If you are ready to do it though, go for it! If you bake once a week and collect the discard you can make overnight pancakes or waffles with all of it and have no waste.
  • 2-3grams of starter
  • 10 grams water
  • 15 grams all-purpose flour.

Keep in a cold spot and feed once a day

• I noticed that when my starter is consistently fed, it gave me such a broader range of fermentation. My dough didn’t overproof as fast and it felt stronger for longer. It’s like keeping your body in shape. Regular maintenance = more resilience when tested. It’s been a while since I made a video on this, so please comment if you’d like to see me doing this.
• I’d like to also mention how to feed this small amount of starter when you’re ready to bake, as that was a top asked question.
  • My base country loaf recipe has 80 grams of starter, but I see a lot of people using 100 grams, so I will make that the example. Remember, you can figure out how much to feed your starter by taking the amount you need to bake, subtracting how much starter you already have, and then dividing that number in half and feeding your starter that amount. (Example: I have 25 grams starter. I need 200 grams for 2 loaves. 200-25= 175. 175/2= 87.5grams each. I’d round that to 90 grams each. Before bed, I’d feed 25 grams 90 grams water and 90 grams flour)
    • For 100 grams:
      • Feed 25 grams starter
      • 40 grams water
      • 40 grams flour
        • If you live somewhere cold, you can do this feeding before bed. If it’s warm where you live, I’d feed it first thing in the morning and mix your dough later in the day.
        • This will leave you with just the scrapings, which you can then feed 10 grams water and 15 grams flour, just like above. This is your daily maintenance feed.
• More mixing. While I don’t think you have to do this either, it’s also one of those things that all bakeries do. If you go to your local artisan bakery, their bread dough is most likely mixed way longer than you mix your dough. This gives early on strength, which means the gluten develops before the acid and fermentation starts to deteriorate it. If your dough is lower hydration, this is not as important. Think of it like this- if you have a super strong person (the flour) and many bags of luggage (water), the more bags you put on the person the harder it will be for them to stand tall and strong. This is similar to how the gluten holds up the air bubbles in your dough (and bread) and the more water you add to it, the more stressed it gets (but when you go too low, the bread doesn’t have the same texture as when you add more water and it gets drier faster… but it’s all quite a wide range!). If you make it strong immediately, you’re making it easier for it to continue bearing the stressor of water (this point will be mentioned in my #3!). So, if you have a mixer, use it. Mix that dough until you notice a change. Till it goes from lumpy, shaggy, sticking to the bowl, tearing when you grab it… to smooth, homogenous, it comes off the bowl when you pull it, and you can pull a windowpane. If you don’t have a mixer, I’m a huge fan of slap and folds. Mix your dough, let it rest 10-15 minutes, and then do a bunch of slap and folds until the dough comes together and looks like what I mentioned above. If it starts to rip and tear and fall apart, walk away. Give it some more time to rest and then continue. I think you’ll notice a huge difference in your dough when you do your folds.
• Adding water in stages. While this point only makes sense if you’re going above, say, 70% hydration, I really like how it strengthens my dough. Like I mentioned above, the water stresses the flour. Adding the water in stages makes a really nice dough to work with and I prefer it over autolyse. I like to hold back 5-8% of what I want to eventually add, and if the dough feels wet enough, I just don’t add more water. Flour of the same brand and type can fluctuate, even buying “bread flour” or “strong flour” from different brands will behave differently. Holding back some water allows control for the baker and a moment to assess the dough. It’s pretty easy to do this both with a mixer and without. I find it easier to hand mix water in compared to adding the starter and salt later in the process. When you add water to flour, the little flour granules swell. Adding water in stages makes it easier to absorb which creates a stronger dough. I will share more about this in 2026.

What have you learned this year? What can I share more with you? The thing I will be working on first is learning more about whole grains and fresh milled flour. I have worked with both of these a lot, but I still don’t feel I truly grasp them. I am flying to Canada in 2 weeks to take a course at Rise Baking Lab all about that and will come back ready to share my learnings with you! AGAIN, such a BIG THANK YOU!!!!!!!

Laila