03/05/2026
I said that 2025 I was turning over a new leaf, and that I was going to tell people like it is. I’m still going to do that with kindness and compassion, but the bad information (even if well-meaning) in the sourdough world has truly gotten out of control.
For the last five years, my mission has been to help people bake better bread, whether that’s for themselves and friends and family, or they have designs on scaling up into cottage bakery production. But there’s also a lot of bad bread out there these days, and that’s mostly because the loudest voices in the room are usually the people who know the least.
The unvarnished truth is much of the bread I see is under fermented. And under-fermented bread isn’t particularly healthy, even when made with sourdough. It also doesn’t taste great or eat particularly well either. When I say much, I mean the overwhelming majority of bread I see online today is under fermented.
If you are just baking for you and yours, perhaps that is unimportant. If you are baking for others it matters more. If you are baking as a trade it matters greatly.
Baking sourdough bread isn’t a talent, it’s a skill. Being a baker is a skilled trade, one that requires extensive training in trade school, or on the job as an apprentice, or likely even longer if self-taught and learning through online sources.
To become a baker in France or Germany, for instance, one must complete a 2-3 year apprenticeship in a bakery, whilst also completing a vocational course in theory, and then pass both theoretical and practical exams.
And I’m not for a second suggesting that should be the bar to entry as a micro-baker, but this sure feels like another gold rush with sourdough right now… People that have been baking for a few months or maybe even a year, and have watched a bunch of influencer videos on Instagram and YouTube are now branding themselves as bakers.
And probably the biggest irony in all of this is that artisan baking should be about intentionality in food choices, but yet it’s literally being commoditized right before our eyes. Packaged neatly, but without real substance or understanding.
And the backlash is coming if it’s not here already. Remember when craft beer was the rage, but then it got silly? Or acai bowls and ‘superfood’ smoothies? What about farm-to-table, when suddenly every menu in America seemingly had ‘blistered shisitos’ on it?
Consumers get caught up for a while, but they eventually catch on. Just because something is ‘craft’ doesn’t necessarily make it good. So when I hear people say things like “sourdough should be dense and chewy” or “they’ve obviously never had real sourdough” I wonder whether they themselves have ever had truly good bread.
And before anyone says I’m talking about aesthetics, I’m not. I’m talking about bread made with respect for fermentation and ingredients. Bread can absolutely be beautiful, and be expressed as an art form, but it is fundamentally a staple food.
In the words of Raymond Calvel, “La vérité sort du four,” or “The truth comes out of the oven.
