Here’s a Helpful Timer for Everything You Do With Sourdough.
All bakers these days, which, apart from the lack of flour, is not bad. (For example, better than anyone who copes with isolation when they start making methamphetamine or macrame.) But bread can be a little overwhelming, especially if you’ve just picked a sourdough and aren’t used to recipes. which can stretch for hours or even days.
Luckily, home baker and journalist Stuart Thompson has created Bread Scheduler , a scheduling tool that helps you plan everything you need to get up and down with precision. Just pick one of six suggested recipes and choose a start time, and the Bread Scheduler gives you timed step-by-step instructions, timer reminders and helpful photos. As Thompson explained to me via email, what started out as a cumbersome Google Doc for personal use has evolved into a handy tool for everyone:
I created this site last year to explore some of the web content that I have always been curious about. And also because I had very long, really annoying Google Docs with possible schedules for all of my bread recipes. I tried to bake on weekends, but it always hurt to know when I needed to be home and how long it would take. The Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast book included schedules along with recipes, and I thought it was very convenient. And a lot of bread sites are just awful, as are most recipe sites. After complaining about this for a while, I just decided to do something. When the pandemic did break out, I saw a lot of bread tweets on the internet and just felt a sense of community, like we should all share what we have to help each other, not to help develop an interest in doing things at home. … So I decided to release it and the welcome was surprisingly very kind.
While time isn’t the only thing that affects your bread – humidity and temperature play an important role as well, Thompson says the scheduler can be especially useful for true beginners:
I’ll just say that for beginners, having a lot of specific instructions really helps reduce anxiety. But I also made it not so much a guide for the exact time as a planner so that you know when you need to be there and how long it will take. If baking is 18, 24 hours or more, you really need to start at the right time and plan for a few days. So he’s just trying to fix this problem! This is why you can move the chart around and make fine adjustments to suit your situation.
If you don’t know where – or more accurately, when – to start, don’t worry, the planner has a built-in “perfect time” to start each recipe. As someone who no longer has a clue of what day it is, let alone an hour, I think this is a very nice feature.