Flavour & Fire
The Sourdough Journal
Process Control
Good sourdough baking is not about keeping everything under control. It is about learning when to adjust.
A sourdough dough does not follow a completely fixed schedule. Even when you use the same flour, the same ratios and the same starter from one bake to the next, changes in temperature, starter maturity and the conditions in your kitchen can make the dough behave slightly differently. That does not make the process unpredictable. It simply means that you learn to work with what is happening in front of you.
Process control therefore begins not with more rules, but with attention. You watch the dough, feel how it changes, keep track of time and temperature, and use that information to decide what the next step requires. Sometimes that means another fold, sometimes it means giving the dough more time, and sometimes it means leaving it completely alone.
Why Process Control Matters
A recipe tells you what to use and usually gives you a sequence of steps and a number of useful guidelines. What it cannot tell you is exactly how your dough will behave today.
That is because fermentation depends on conditions that can change from one bake to another. A starter that is lively and close to its peak one day may behave differently the next, while a warm kitchen can move fermentation along much faster than a cool one. The flour you use also affects how the dough absorbs water, develops structure and responds to fermentation.
Process control helps you see these differences not as mistakes, but as information. Instead of following one particular time or appearance without question, you learn to consider several signals together and use them to decide what the dough needs next.
Time as a Tool
Time is one of the easiest things to record, and one of the easiest things to misuse.
When you note when you mixed the dough, when fermentation began, when you folded it and when you shaped it, you create a timeline of the bake. That timeline does not tell you automatically whether the dough is ready, but it gives meaning to what you see.
If the dough already looks lively after two hours, that is useful information. If the same dough has changed very little after four hours on a cooler day, that tells you something too.
The clock is not an instruction.
It is a reference point.
Keeping an Eye on Temperature
Temperature is one of the most important variables during fermentation. A difference of only a few degrees can noticeably influence how quickly the dough develops, which is why it can be useful to know not only the temperature of the room but, where practical, the temperature of the dough itself.
Looking at temperature alongside time gives you a much clearer picture of what is happening. A dough fermenting warmly and developing volume quickly needs to be assessed differently from the same dough moving slowly in a cooler environment.
You do not need to record every fluctuation to the nearest degree. The aim is not to turn sourdough into a laboratory experiment, but to make the variables that matter most visible enough to understand.
Read the Dough
The most useful information is ultimately not on your thermometer or in your notebook, but in the bowl.
Look at how the dough changes and how it moves when you gently shift the bowl. Notice whether the surface has changed, whether bubbles are appearing and whether the dough has developed more tension and cohesion. When you fold it, pay attention to the resistance it offers, how elastic it feels and whether it is beginning to hold its shape more readily.
None of these signs tells the whole story.
Together, they tell you much more.
That is why it is useful to ask not only how much the dough has risen, but how it has changed. Volume, structure, temperature, time and texture become far more meaningful when you consider them as parts of the same process.
Measuring Without Disturbing the Dough
Measurements can be useful, but every measurement can also affect the process if it requires you to handle or move the dough repeatedly.
A thermometer can tell you the temperature. A straight-sided, transparent container can make changes in volume easier to observe. A few notes can later show you how long each stage took. These simple tools can give you more confidence without requiring you to keep opening, moving or touching the dough.
The purpose of measuring is not to remove every uncertainty.
It is to make patterns visible.
When Should You Adjust?
Adjusting the process does not mean that something has gone wrong. It means that you are using new information to decide what makes sense now.
If your dough is fermenting more quickly than expected, you may need to move on to the next stage sooner. If it is developing slowly, it may simply need more time. A dough that remains very loose during bulk fermentation might benefit from another gentle fold, while one that has already developed good tension and structure may be better left undisturbed.
What matters is not to respond to every small difference with another intervention. Sometimes a variation is simply a variation, rather than a problem that needs fixing.
Good process control therefore involves knowing not only when to do something, but when the better decision is to leave the dough alone.
Keep Your Own Notes
One of the simplest ways to become better at sourdough is to record a few details from each bake.
You might note the flour you used, the amount of starter, how active the starter was, the dough temperature and how long each stage took. You can also record what the dough looked and felt like, and why you decided that it was ready to move on.
One bake may not tell you very much. Ten or twenty can begin to reveal a pattern.
You may discover that your dough needs considerably longer in winter, that a particular flour absorbs more water than another, or that your starter behaves most predictably at a certain point in the day. Gradually, you build your own reference point — based on your kitchen, your ingredients and the way you work.
Recipe Versus Reality
A good recipe is a starting point, not a contract.
The ratios of flour, water, starter and salt give you the foundation, while the instructions provide a direction to follow. But once those ingredients meet, the dough begins to tell you its own story.
That does not mean changing the recipe every time something looks different. In fact, changing several things at once makes it much harder to understand why the dough responded differently. Keeping as much as possible consistent and changing one variable at a time gives you a much clearer picture of what that particular change actually did.
In that sense, process control becomes a way of learning.
From Following to Understanding
At first, sourdough can feel like a sequence of moments when you need to know exactly what to do: mix, fold, wait, shape, chill and bake. Each stage seems to have its own rules, and it is tempting to look for the perfect instruction that will remove all uncertainty.
Over time, that begins to change.
You start to notice the connections between temperature and speed, between structure and fermentation, and between the activity of your starter and the way your dough behaves. You do not necessarily become less careful; you simply begin to work with a better understanding of what is happening.
Process control is not about forcing the dough to follow your plan. It is about paying enough attention to recognise when the process is asking for something different.
You do not need to control everything. You need to learn to see what is happening.
You do not need to control everything. You need to learn to see what is happening.