What to Write in a Baking Journal (and What to Skip)
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Most baking journals fail the same way: the first three entries are beautiful and detailed, and there is no fourth entry. The fix is to write far less than you think you should.
Here's the minimum record that's actually worth keeping.
The six numbers
Per bake, thirty seconds:
- Flour — type and weight
- Hydration — as a percentage, so it's comparable
- Starter — percentage, and how it looked when you used it (peaked, past peak, sluggish)
- Kitchen temperature — the number nobody records and the one that explains the most
- Bulk length — hours, and how much it rose
- Bake — temperature and time, lid on and lid off
If you record nothing else, record temperature and bulk length together. Almost every "it worked last time and not this time" is those two, and they're invisible unless written down. Our guide to proofing temperature explains why a four-degree difference reorganises your whole schedule.
The one sentence
Then a single line about the result. Not a paragraph. Something like:
"Tight crumb, no ear, tasted flat. Starter was past peak."
That's a diagnosis and a hypothesis in eleven words, and next time you'll check the starter earlier. That's the whole point of the journal.
The one change rule
Write down what you changed from last time. One thing.
Changing four variables at once is the reason people bake for a year without improving — there's no way to attribute the result to anything. One change per bake, recorded, and you learn something every single time.
This is also where baker's percentage pays for itself: percentages are comparable between bakes in a way gram weights aren't.
A photo of the crumb
Take one, of the cut face, in daylight. Your memory of "a bit dense" is unreliable three weeks later; a photograph isn't.
Keep them in one album on your phone and write the date next to the entry. You don't need a photo in the book — you need to be able to find it.
What to skip
Timestamps for everything. "09:14 first fold" is a level of precision that makes the journal a chore and tells you nothing. Elapsed hours are enough.
The full recipe, every time. Write your base formula once at the front. Then each entry is just the deviations from it.
Feelings about the bake. Enjoy them; don't file them. The journal is for the parts you can act on.
Perfect handwriting and layout. The elaborate journal is the one that gets abandoned. Scruffy and continuing beats beautiful and abandoned.
Also worth a page
Your starter's history. When you got it, what you feed it, how it behaves in summer versus winter. You'll want this when it misbehaves — see starter troubleshooting.
Your oven's real temperature. Most domestic ovens run 10–20°C off their dial and it's consistent. Measure it once with an oven thermometer, write it down, and correct for it forever.
Who you gave loaves to. Sounds sentimental; it's practical. You'll want to know who's had one recently, and it's a nice thing to have a record of years later.
Paper or an app?
Whichever you'll actually use. Paper has one genuine advantage in a kitchen: it works with floury hands and doesn't lock, sleep or need charging. An open notebook next to the dough gets written in; a phone in your pocket usually doesn't.
Our spiral notebooks lie flat, which sounds like a small thing until you've tried to write in a bound book with one hand covered in dough.
These are made to order like everything else — 2–5 business days production, then 3–5 days in Germany, 4–8 in the EU and UK, 3–7 in the US and Canada, 8–15 elsewhere. No size to get wrong, which makes them one of the easier gifts. Anything faulty is replaced or refunded within 30 days on a photo to support@zomamoda.com.
Questions we get asked
What should I record in a sourdough journal?
Flour, hydration, starter percentage and condition, kitchen temperature, bulk length and rise, and bake temperature and time. Then one sentence on the result and one line on what you changed.
Is keeping a baking journal worth it?
Yes, if you keep it short. Six numbers and a sentence per bake takes under a minute and turns repeated guessing into a record you can reason from. Elaborate journals get abandoned by entry four.
What's the single most useful thing to write down?
Kitchen temperature alongside bulk length. It's the pairing that explains almost every inconsistent result, and almost nobody records it.
Paper or an app?
Whichever gets used. Paper works with floury hands and stays open next to the dough, which in practice means it gets written in more often.