05/15/2026
🧠Stop setting timers. Start reading your dough.
If your recipe says “bulk ferment for four hours” and you’ve ever pulled a loaf out flat, gummy, or underbaked even though you followed every step, the problem isn’t the recipe. It’s the assumption that your kitchen is the same temperature as the kitchen the recipe was tested in.
It isn’t.
A dough at 78°F ferments completely differently than a dough at 68°F. Same flour, same starter, same hydration. Totally different timeline. The clock can’t see that. Your dough can.
That’s why I built the Fermentation Compass.
You put in your dough temperature, your starter activity, and your hydration, and it tells you how to read what’s happening in your dough in real time. Not when to stop. What to look for. Surface bubbles. Jiggle. Rise percentage. Domed top. The signs that tell you your dough is ready, no matter what time the recipe says it should be.
🎥 Watch the 60-second explainer:
https://youtube.com/shorts/pCcIO7rXWnk
🧠Get the Compass:
https://compass.bakinggreatbread.com
If you’ve been baking by the clock and your loaves haven’t been consistent, this is the tool. Free to use, no signup, no funnel. Just a baker’s tool for bakers.
Come bake with us at Crust & Crumb Academy, the #1 bread baking community on Skool.
https://skoo.ly/crust-crumb-academy
Watch the dough, not the clock. The information is in the dough.
Henry Hunter
Author of Sourdough for the Rest of Us
