How to Keep a Sourdough Journal That Actually Improves Your Bread
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Here is the most common conversation in home baking. Someone produces a genuinely excellent loaf. Someone else asks what they did differently. They say: "I'm honestly not sure."
That's not a failure of skill. It's a failure of record-keeping. Sourdough has six or seven variables moving at once, and human memory is terrible at holding six variables across a week. Write them down and the mystery largely disappears.
This is the cheapest, fastest improvement available to any home baker, and almost nobody does it.
The seven things worth recording
You don't need a lab notebook. Seven lines per bake is enough to diagnose almost anything.
1. Flour, by type and brand
Not just "bread flour." Protein content varies significantly between brands and even between batches of the same brand, and it changes how much water your dough will take. If you switch brands and everything suddenly goes wrong, this line is how you'll know why.
2. Hydration, as a percentage
Water weight divided by flour weight. If you use 350g water to 500g flour, that's 70%. Write the percentage rather than the grams — percentages are comparable across different batch sizes, grams aren't.
3. Room temperature
The single most under-recorded variable, and the one that explains most seasonal weirdness. A dough at 19°C behaves nothing like the same dough at 26°C. If your loaves mysteriously changed in October, this is almost certainly why.
4. Starter condition
How long since it was fed, and how active it looked when you used it. "Fed 6h before, doubled, domed" tells you far more later than "used starter."
5. Bulk fermentation time, and how you judged the end
Record both the clock time and the signal you used — percentage rise, bubbles on the surface, jiggle. The signal matters more than the clock, but recording both is how you learn what the clock means in your kitchen.
6. Proof: length, and cold or ambient
Note whether it went in the fridge, and for how long. Cold proofing is one of the biggest levers on flavour and on how manageable the dough is when you score it.
7. The result, in plain language
Two lines. What the crumb looked like, whether the ear opened, whether it was too dense or too slack. Add a photo if you keep a phone in the kitchen.
A template you can copy
Rule off a page and write these down the left margin. It takes about ninety seconds per bake.
- Date —
- Flour — type, brand, blend if mixed
- Hydration — %
- Room temp — °C
- Starter — hours since feed, activity
- Bulk — duration, end signal
- Shaping — anything you did differently
- Proof — length, cold or ambient
- Bake — temperature, lid on/off timings
- Result — crumb, crust, ear, honest verdict
- Change next time — one thing only
That last line is the important one, and it's the one people skip.
The one rule: change one thing at a time
This is where most home bakers go wrong. A loaf disappoints, so the next weekend they raise the hydration, extend bulk, and switch to a new flour — all at once. The next loaf is better, and they've learned nothing, because they can't tell which change did it.
Change one variable per bake. It feels slow. It is dramatically faster than the alternative, because after eight weeks you'll actually know your own process instead of having eight weeks of guesses.
How to read your notes back
After roughly ten bakes, the journal starts paying out. Some things to look for:
Dense, tight crumb showing up repeatedly? Look at your bulk times against your room temperature column. Under-fermentation is the most common cause, and it's usually a cool kitchen rather than a bad starter.
Dough slack and hard to shape? Check hydration against flour brand. A flour with lower protein won't hold the water you're giving it.
No ear, flat top? Look at proof length — over-proofed dough has nothing left to push upward when it hits the oven.
Everything changed and you don't know why? Check room temperature across the last month. Seasonal shift is the answer far more often than people expect.
Paper or an app?
Both work, and this is genuinely personal. Apps sort and search; paper survives flour, doesn't need clean hands, and doesn't tempt you into scrolling mid-bulk.
The real argument for paper is that a notebook sitting open on the counter gets filled in. An app you have to unlock with dough on your fingers does not.
If you want one, ours are spiral-bound so they lie flat on a counter — Daily Dough Journal, Sourdough Science, Flour, Water, Salt, Time, and Trust the Process, which is the right thing to read after a failure. See all notebooks.
Common questions
What should I record in a sourdough journal?
Flour type and brand, hydration percentage, room temperature, starter condition, bulk fermentation time and end signal, proof length, and an honest verdict on the result. Seven lines is enough to diagnose almost any recurring problem.
Does keeping a baking journal actually help?
Yes, and more than most equipment. Sourdough results swing with variables most bakers don't track, so without notes you can't reproduce a good loaf on purpose. Logging turns a run of lucky bakes into a repeatable process.
Why do my loaves change in winter?
Room temperature. Fermentation slows markedly in a cooler kitchen, so a bulk time that worked in July will under-ferment in January. Recording ambient temperature is what makes this obvious rather than mysterious.
ZomaModa makes sourdough and baking gear for people who take it far too seriously. Browse baking journals or see the full stationery range.