Do you want to learn how to read your crumb?
Reading crumb means looking at the inside of your loaf and understanding what happened during the bake. How fermentation developed, how the dough held its structure, and how it expanded in the oven. This is the difference between following a process and being able to look at your bread and understand it.
@alishafullerbread will be reading crumb photos submitted by bakers in this community and breaking down what they show. Your crumb reflects fermentation, starter strength, gluten development, shaping, and how the dough behaved in the oven, along with the other factors that shaped the bake.
The goal is to build your ability to look at your own crumb and understand what happened in your bake and what to do next time should you need to make any changes.
If you want your loaf included, send a clear crumb photo in a DM along with your process, including your formula, starter amount and maintenance, bulk fermentation time, dough temperature, shaping and scoring, and your bake temperature, steam method, and timing, and include as much detail as you can so the read is as accurate as possible.
Starter maintenance shouldn’t feel confusing or inconsistent, and it shouldn’t leave you guessing what’s going wrong.
In this blog, Laila of @theearlyrisebaker breaks down what keeps a sourdough starter active, balanced, and reliable. She walks through daily counter feeding, simple weekly fridge routines, and how to reset a starter that’s gone too acidic. This is a clear look at how to build a routine that supports your baking and shows up in your final loaf.
Laila shows how temperature, feeding ratios, and timing shape how your starter behaves day to day. She points out the signs that tell you when your starter needs attention and when it’s ready to use. The blog connects each approach to how often you bake and how your kitchen runs so you can apply it directly.
Read the full blog at the link in bio👉🏻
Words truly cannot encapsulate the emotions from this day.
@theearlyrisebaker , you are something so special to this baking world. West Coast Bread Fest was an incredible experience, and I feel so honored to have been able to cover it, connect with so many talented bakers, and learn from people who pour so much heart into their craft.
The day was full of laughs, lessons, and legends. My heart is bursting for this community, and having one place on the West Coast dedicated to celebrating bread, bakers, makers, and the magic behind it all is something I will treasure forever.
I’m in awe of the collaborative effort that brought this day to life — from @centralmilling , @simplybreadco , @eatbasilandbloom , @wiremonkeyshop , and the long list of instructors, volunteers, vendors, and hands behind the scenes who made it all feel so intentional and full of heart.
Bread has this beautiful way of bringing people together, and this day was such a reminder of why I fell in love with baking in the first place.
Still floating. Still inspired. Still so grateful. 🥖✨
#westcoastbreadfest #breadfest #sourdoughcommunity #sourdough #inspiration
Do you want to make the easiest, softest sourdough sandwich bread?
@alishafullerbread shares her process:
Add water, starter, flour, sugar, and salt to the mixer all at once and mix on low until everything comes together. Slowly pour in the melted (and cooled) butter, then continue mixing on low for about 12 to 13 minutes. The dough looks pretty messy at first but develops through to a beautiful marshmallowy dough.
Let it rest a few minutes in the bowl, then move it to your proofing container. Do a few sets of folds, let it rise until doubled, then shape. Place in pans seam side down. You can either further proof the dough and bake from here or move it to the fridge overnight.
The next day, pull it out, let it proof on the counter until puffy, brush with melted butter, and bake at 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes.
It’s soft, fluffy, and incredibly easy to make.
Recipe (1 loaf ~800g):
435g flour
287g water
43g starter
26g butter
26g sugar
9g salt
Save this to make it later💪🏻
We absolutely love this gorgeous ube sourdough from @breadtista_llc . The color of that dough is just so beautiful 👌🏻👌🏻 It carries all the way through and holds stunningly from scoring to bake. This is a great example of control and consistency from mixing dough to final bake!
Thank you Laney for sharing your beautiful bakes with us. 🫶🏻
Don’t forget to tag us if you want to be featured on our page!
Our friend and fellow Simply Bread oven owner Homayra Quoreshi of @monarchbakeryva stopped by the Clifton Farmers Market, VA to visit Ayse Kesner of @all.about.that.loaf and said it better than we ever could:
“Stopped by the Clifton Farmers Market, VA today to see All About That Loaf. Ayse Kesner is an incredible baker and truly a local legend. Three Simply Bread Co. ovens says it all!!! That’s real dedication. She puts so much care into using great ingredients and baking the best bread she can. I’m grateful to know her and call her a friend.”
This community never stops inspiring us. Bakers helping each other grow, sharing recipes that finally worked, cheering each other on. Friendships forged over a shared love of real bread. Bakers supporting bakers. That’s how Simply Bread came to be.
As Homayra puts it, “there’s room for all of us.” ❤️
Jessie Youngblood of @doughbauchery came with us to @westcoastbreadfest this last Saturday repping Simply Bread. It was an intimate, all-day celebration of bread baking and community.
Her day included classes, conversations with bakers, tasting the bakes, and meeting everyone in the room.
There’s something particularly special about being in a space where everyone showed up because they genuinely love what they do. Being part of the very first West Coast Bread Festival meant a lot to us. Thank you, Jessie, for bringing us along🫶🏻
This Saturday we got to spend the day at @westcoastbreadfest surrounded by people who care deeply about bread, fermentation, grain, pastry, and the craft behind all of it.
Jon taught one of the only classes at the event fully focused on naturally leavened croissants and sourdough pastry, with around 20 bakers in the room, from beginners to strong bakery owners. Even though laminated sourdough is impossible to fully cover in one session, it was incredibly rewarding to share knowledge, answer questions, and hopefully inspire more bakers to keep exploring naturally leavened pastry.
We got to reconnect with friends, meet new bakers, judge an incredible bake-off with around 40 beautiful loaves, and spend the weekend talking about real bread with people who genuinely love the craft.
Weekends like this remind us how much knowledge-sharing matters in this industry. A rising tide really does lift all ships. Thank you @theearlyrisebaker to connect all of us together!
And if seeing this makes you want to learn with us in person, we still have a few seats left in our upcoming sourdough classes at Proof (Shea location).
We’re not sure yet when the next round will happen, so if you’ve been thinking about it, this is a good time to register!
Link in bio.
This weekend, Jessica of @doughbauchery traveled with Simply Bread to Petaluma CA for @westcoastbreadfest , where we spent the day in a room full of people fully engaged in their craft, and in the work behind it.
From the moment the day began, there was a steady excitement. Dough being shaped, ovens opening and closing, conversations building around shared experience. Every table held someone refining a process, asking questions, or passing along what they’ve learned.
There is something powerful about being in a room where this level of focus is the baseline. You feel it in the pace, in the attention to detail, in the way people stay present with what they’re doing.
We’re grateful to have been there, to meet and see everyone and to spend time within a community that continues to shape and strengthen this craft.
Thank you Laila @theearlyrisebaker for building something that brought so many people together and for creating something special that people will carry with them long after the day ended.
Yesterday, I found myself teaching in a room full of flour-dusted hands and people who speak the same strange, beautiful language, the language of fermentation, fire, patience, and instinct.
West Coast Bread Fest.
Not a competition. Not a spectacle. Something way mo better.
A gathering.
Held together somehow, impossibly by Laila O’Boyle aka @theearlyrisebaker . The kind of person who doesn’t just organize an event, but builds a table big enough for all of us to sit at. The kind of effort that doesn’t show up in photos: the emails, the money, the sleepless nights, the quiet belief that if you bring good people together, something meaningful will happen.
And it does.
You look around and see it…bakers trading notes like secrets, laughing like old friends even if they met an hour ago. Recipes get shared. Stories get told. Failures get admitted. Wins get celebrated. No ego, just craft. No competition, just respect.
This is the part people don’t see when they bite into a loaf.
The community behind it.
I’ve loved being a baker since the moment I started. The early mornings, the rhythm, the obsession—it gets in your blood. But being here, surrounded by people who feel it the same way… it reminds you why you stay.
Why it matters.
This isn’t just bread.
It’s culture.
It’s camaraderie.
Do you know what happens when you turn the coils off during a bake versus leaving them on in the Simply Bread Oven? When you load dough into the oven, the stones are doing the heavy lifting. They’ve stored all that energy from the preheat and the moment dough hits the deck, it starts drawing from them. What happens above the dough during that bake is what separates these two methods. Coils on means that heat is being constantly replenished from above, driving intensity, spring, and speed. Coils off means the heat gradually drops as the bake goes on, creating a slower, more relaxed environment that can produce a lighter, more golden loaf.
It all comes down to what the heat is doing during the bake. A taller faster loaf or a more gentle and golden one, both are intentional results when you know what’s driving them.
To read more about how heat works in the Simply Bread Oven, check out our blog “Should I Bake With My Coils On Or Off?” linked in bio 👉🏻
There is so much work tucked into a moment like this. The mixing, the shaping, the timing and the quiet trust it takes to keep showing up.
What we see on screen is beautiful! What makes it meaningful is everything that happened before the camera was on.
Thank you @oliveandgreyllc for sharing your dreams with us!
Don’t forget to tag us if you want to be featured on our page!
