VITALS TABLE First, the vitals table gives you up front the important information about the bread you’re about to bake. It’s another way for a baker to get a feel for the bread before they even begin. Over time, these terms will carry significance for you when reading bread formulas. (See Baker’s Percentages, this page, for more on these

The inoculation percentage is the amount of ripe (or mature) sourdough starter either carried over between refreshments or used to create a levain. This percentage is calculated the same way as all other ingredients using a baker’s percentage (see Baker’s Percentages, this page), and it’s relative to the total flour. It’s called “inoculation”

A levain serves a few purposes: It can be used to alter the flavor, texture, and potential volume of the final loaf without having to modify your sourdough starter. Think of it as a custom-made starter for each recipe you embark on. A levain can skew the flavor profile of the bread toward more sour or less sour by altering its “build parameters”:

DOUGH TABLES These tables are found at the autolyse and mixing steps. If the recipe doesn’t have an autolyse, you’ll simply find one table with all the dough ingredients needed for mixing: levain plus flour, water, salt, etc. If it does have an autolyse, you’ll find a separate table where all the flour and most of the water (usually all of Water 1)

There are a few key differences (see Levain vs. Starter, this page), but a sourdough starter and a levain are essentially the same thing: They are both pre-ferments, meaning a mixture of flour and water that’s seeded with a small bit of ongoing culture and left to ferment.

Since I almost always make a levain when baking, the starter maintenance becomes a little less important compared to the levain (assuming the starter is strong and heathy). The levain works as a sort of equalizer or buffer, giving the bacteria and yeast populations from your starter a chance to grow and increase metabolic activity in the best

Highly hydrated dough: A dough such as this that lacks structure can be expected to spread during proofing. Using a large basket with too much space will allow the dough to spread outward, ultimately reducing loaf volume. In this case, I’d choose a smaller basket to give the weak dough extra structure—or failing that, ensure that the dough

sticking to the same recipe will quickly build your baking proficiency and make subsequent bakes that much easier. At the end of the recipe, you’ll find ways to level up for next time and a troubleshooting guide if you need it.

In my experience, the amount of rise in a starter isn’t as important as other signs of fermentation (such as aroma, presence of bubbles, and its consistency) when gauging its level of ripeness. Take, for example, a starter consisting of 100% high-protein white flour compared to a starter consisting of 100% rye flour; these two starters will display