Saving Bread

Send us a question or voice memo! Maurizio Leo, founder of The Perfect Loaf and James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, joins me to celebrate the release of his new book, The Perfect Pizza . Growing up in his father's pizzeria, Maurizio developed a love for pizza long before he became known for sourdough bread. Now he's bringing his thoughtful, technique-driven approach to making exce...

Send us a question or voice memo! A little something different this week! I'm sitting down for an unedited Q&A, answering questions submitted by Saving Bread listeners from around the world. We're talking about blending flours for better sourdough, shaping dough based on how it behaves, knowing when to stop adding bassinage water, choosing quality grains without breaking the bank, an...

Send us a question or voice memo! What do sourdough bread, music, pottery, and a colorful silicone scrubber have in common? Joshua Grange. Joshua is a lifelong professional musician who has toured and recorded with artists including kd lang, Beck, and Sheryl Crow. He's also a passionate sourdough baker, the creator of DOAP, and the musician behind the Saving Bread theme song. In this episode,...

Send us a question or voice memo! What does it take to build a stronger, more connected baking community, and how do we make sure the people preserving the craft of bread baking have the resources they need to succeed? This week on Saving Bread, I'm joined by Karen Bornarth, Executive Director of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, and Wai Chu, the Guild's Education and Events Manager , f...

Send us a question or voice memo! This week on Saving Bread, I'm joined by Cat Cox, the baker and owner of Country Bird Bakery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the 2025 James Beard Award winner for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. Cat's journey into baking began in restaurant kitchens, where her curiosity about sourdough and locally sourced ingredients eventually grew into a much bigger vision....

Send us a question or voice memo! My dear friend, mentor, and fellow baker Josh Fairbanks returns to Saving Bread for an honest, completely unedited conversation about scalds, dough development, and the art of becoming a more intuitive baker. We begin by answering listener-submitted questions about scalds: what they are, how they differ from porridges, and why they can be such a valuable tool for...

Send us a question or voice memo! What happens when you take a community that's grown online and bring everyone together in person? This week on Saving Bread, Allison sits down with her longtime friend Laila, the baker and educator behind The Early Rise and founder of West Coast Breadfest. After attending Asheville Breadfest, Laila was inspired to create something similar for the West Coast....

Send us a question or voice memo! Jill Nguyen didn’t grow up baking. In fact, she didn’t start until 2020. What began as a pandemic bread obsession eventually became Capitol Jill Baking, her Washington, DC microbakery known for naturally leavened breads, inventive pastries, and colorful, highly personal cakes. In this episode, Jill and I talk about how she built a baking style that feels unmistaka...

Send us a question or voice memo! This week on Saving Bread, Allison sits down with Jon and Amanda of Proof Bread in Arizona. Proof began in 2017 with hand-mixed dough, one farmers market, a few wholesale accounts, and a home bakery. Today, Proof has grown to five locations, nearly 100 employees, an in-house milling program, relationships with local grain producers, and an entirely sourdough menu....

Send us a question or voice memo! Leah is back for another Rabbit Hole episode, and this time we’re talking about what we’ve been eating, where we’ve been traveling, and the loaf everyone in the bread world seems to have an opinion about. Leah shares her visit to Moulin in Napa, where whole grains and freshly milled flour are worked into breads and pastries. Allison takes us through her trip to Me...

Send us a question or voice memo! pH is one of the topics I’m asked about most often, but the number on a meter is only one part of understanding fermentation. In Lessons E08 of Saving Bread , I break down what is happening inside a sourdough culture and explain how I use pH in my own baking and production. We talk about the relationship between yeast and lactic acid bacteria, the enzymes naturall...

Send us a question or voice memo! What does it take to build an incredibly open, delicate sourdough crumb when you are working with different flour, a different climate, and different equipment than the bakers who originally inspired you? This week on Saving Bread, I am joined by Anujay Krishna, a baker in Lucknow, India, whose beautifully open, lacy country loaves have made him one of the most re...

Send us a question or voice memo! How do you choose the right whole grain flour when the names on the bag start to feel overwhelming? Baylin Speidel, head baker at Chimacum Valley Grainery, returns to Saving Bread for a practical conversation about grain selection, flour functionality, extraction rates and scalds. We break down hard red, hard white and soft wheat, along with rye, spelt, buckwheat...

Send us a question or voice memo! What actually changes when you start adding more whole grain to sourdough? In this Lessons episode of Saving Bread, Allison White breaks down what happens when a familiar country loaf moves from mostly white bread flour toward 40, 50, 60, or even 100 percent whole grain. Whole wheat is not white flour with a little extra color. It is a different raw material, and...

Send us a question or voice memo! Jenny Berg of Crumb Sourdough Microbakery joins me for a conversation about what it actually looks like to build a home-based bread business and how many different paths that can take. Jenny started baking sourdough in 2020 and eventually turned that obsession into Crumb Sourdough Microbakery in Central Oregon. Along the way, she helped organize a grassroots effor...

Send us a question or voice memo! This week on Saving Bread , we’re stepping away from the pH meters, fermentation charts, and troubleshooting for a conversation about the other side of bread: history, culture, memory, and story. Allison sits down with Eric Pallant, author of Sourdough Culture: A History of Bread Making from Ancient to Modern Bakers , to ask a deceptively simple question: What act...

Send us a question or voice memo! Why is your sourdough flat? What causes huge tunnels surrounded by dense crumb? How do you know when bulk fermentation is finished? And when a loaf goes wrong, how do you figure out which part of the process was actually responsible? In this Lessons episode of Saving Bread , Allison walks through the basic country loaf from start to finish and breaks down some of...

Send us a question or voice memo! How do you actually know when bulk fermentation is finished? What makes a sourdough starter strong and healthy? And how can understanding the science of fermentation help you become a more intuitive baker? This week on Saving Bread , Allison White talks with Tom Cucuzza, creator of The Sourdough Journey , about his years of experimentation with sourdough bread, st...

Send us a question or voice memo! This week on Saving Bread, Allison talks with Parker Cook, baker, educator and content creator behind Basil & Bloom. Parker has built a large online community teaching sourdough bread baking, fermentation, starter maintenance, whole grains, freshly milled flour and microbakery production. But there is already a lot of information online about how Parker makes...

Send us a question or voice memo! This week on Saving Bread, Allison talks with Martin Sorge, self taught baker, writer, winner of The Great American Baking Show and author of the new cookbook Great Bakes: Modern Classic Recipes from the Midwest. Martin has spent more than a decade baking with local flour, whole grains and unique grain varieties, and his approach makes experimenting with unfamilia...

Send us a question or voice memo! What changes when flour stops being the background of a loaf and becomes the whole party? In this episode of Saving Bread, Allison talks with baker and miller Baylin Speidel, head baker at Chimacum Valley Grainery in Chimacum, Washington. Chimacum Valley Grainery brings farming, stone milling, baking, malting, and brewing together on one property. Baylin shares ho...

Send us a question or voice memo! Ally and Leah are back down the Rabbit Hole for a casual conversation about sourdough experiments, bakery field trips, and the stories we tell through bread. Inspired by Sourdough Culture by Eric Pallant, Leah creates a sourdough starter from scratch for the first time—funky smells, mysterious liquid, daily feedings and all. Meanwhile, Ally compares a traditional...

Send us a question or voice memo! In Lessons Episode 4, we take the country dough formula we created in our Baker’s Math episode and finally turn it into a loaf of bread. I’ll walk you through the entire process, beginning with the night-before levain build and continuing through the autolyse, mixing, gluten development, bulk fermentation, folds, pre-shaping, final shaping, basket proof, cold reta...

Send us a question or voice memo! What began as Campbell McFarlane’s own obsession with sourdough eventually became RackMaster- an oven designed to give home, cottage, and small-scale bakers access to thoughtfully engineered equipment without requiring a traditional bakery. In this episode, Campbell shares how he moved from baking in Dutch ovens and a small deck oven to designing one of the most r...

Send us a question or voice memo! Baker's math doesn't have to be intimidating. In this episode, we're breaking down one of the most misunderstood topics in bread baking into something practical and approachable. We'll walk through baker's percentages, hydration, total formula, mixing-day formula, and pre-fermented flour (PFF)—without getting lost in complicated equations....