This week in the ledger · Log 042 · Rye
Ten percent rye is the smallest addition that is still detectable. Below 5% you are adding grey colour and nothing else; at 10% the loaf picks up a longer sour finish and a faint grey tinge, while the dough behaves exactly like a white dough. It is the cheapest way to make an everyday loaf taste less like every other everyday loaf.
Read the log · 11 Nov 2026
Log 041 · 9 Nov 2026 · Ancient grains
Fifteen percent einkorn is the amount that changes the aroma without changing the dough's behaviour. At this level the gluten network is essentially a wheat network with einkorn's carotenoids and sugars woven through it, which means every technique from the white bread entries still applies and the loaf still smells faintly of honey when it comes out of the oven.
Log 040 · 7 Nov 2026 · Whole wheat
Eighty percent whole wheat with an open crumb is supposed to be impossible. It is not, but it depends less on technique than on one ingredient fact: whole wheat flour that is used within 24 hours of milling behaves almost like a different flour. Freshly milled bran is soft and pliable; bran that has been sitting in a bag for three months is hard and sharp, and it is the hardness that cuts the gluten network.
Log 039 · 5 Nov 2026 · Discard and starter care
Forty-eight hours in the fridge is what makes a discard pizza dough taste like more than a vehicle for cheese. The cold ferment produces the leopard-spotted rim, the slightly sour, wheaty base flavour, and the extensibility that lets you open a ball by hand into a 30 cm round without it springing back.
Search all dough logs
