Sourdough Lab — by Bakeryss
Turn every loaf into a better one.
A practical workspace for sourdough bakers. Calculate with confidence, plan your bake, understand what went wrong, and use what you learn on the next loaf — all in one place.
- Learn
- Calculate
- Plan
- Bake
- Diagnose
- Track
- Improve
Problems you bring to the bench
Sourdough gives you signals. Learning to read them changes how you bake.
Not every failed bake is a missed signal — but when you can say what you saw, you can change one thing at a time. These four problems are the ones bakers bring to Sourdough Lab, each with a real tool that answers it.
- 01
Your starter looks alive — until it doesn't rise.
Keep a feed log with the book's rule-table peak estimates so expectations stay honest, and let the no-rise rescue tree walk you from what you saw to one next experiment.
Starter logging + no-rise tree — Free - 02
The recipe's clock never matches your kitchen.
Dough temperature shifts every timeline. The calculator lands your mixing water, and the Bake Planner schedules around fermentation windows with confirmation signals — not promises.
Dough temperature calculator — Free · Bake Planner — Lab+ - 03
A dense, flat or gummy loaf — with no clear cause.
Six rescue trees ask what you observed first, then rank likely causes qualitatively and suggest changing one variable at a time. No fake probabilities.
Two trees Free · all six with Lab+Read the guide: why a loaf turns out gummy - 04
Your best loaf was a fluke — and you can't repeat it.
Journal what you did, what changed and how it turned out. Over time your own history becomes the reference for a better next bake, and Insights makes the patterns you can trust visible.
Journal — Free (up to 5 saved) · Insights — Lab+
Calculate + Plan
Plan with numbers. Bake with signals.
Five calculators are Free — hydration, baker’s percentage, scaling, starter feeding and dough temperature. Lab+ adds flour blend and inclusion: seven in total, plus the full Bake Planner. Every result shows the formula that produced it.
- HydrationCh. 5Free
- Baker's percentageCh. 5Free
- Recipe scalerCh. 5Free
- Starter feedingCh. 3–4Free
- Dough temperatureCh. 2 & 6Free
- Flour blendCh. 5 & 13Lab+
- InclusionCh. 13Lab+
Fermentation estimates are windows with confirm signals — never a promise the loaf will be done at a precise hour.
Hydration calculator
Free- Main flour
- 450 g
- Main water
- 320 g
- Starter
- 100 g @ 100%
- True hydration
- 74.0%
Why this math · Ch. 5
trueHydration = (mainWater + starterWater) / (mainFlour + starterFlour) × 100
The book’s canonical worked example — computed by the real hydration engine, formula shown with the result.
Bake Planner
Lab+
Diagnose
When a bake goes wrong, start with what you saw.
The rescue trees work the way evidence should: you answer questions about what you actually observed, and the tree ranks possible causes qualitatively — no made-up confidence percentages. Two trees are Free; all six open up with Lab+.
The Trees cover weak rise, starter no-rise, flat loaf, dense or gummy crumb, pooled dough and pale crust.
Diagnose · flat loaf
Lab+ treeHow strong is your starter right now?
- Young (< 1 week) or rarely peaks
- Healthy — doubles reliably
- Sluggish, hoochy or sharp-smelling
- Not sure
Possible causes, ranked from what you observed
- Under-fermented bulk
- Young or sluggish starter
- Over-proofed dough
- Dough stayed cold
Evidence-first, nothing invented: the lab asks what you saw, ranks causes qualitatively, and suggests one change at a time. The weak-rise and starter no-rise trees are Free; the rest — flat loaf included — open up with Lab+.
Diagnose result
Lab+ tree
Journal + Insights
Every bake becomes useful data.
Record what you did, what changed, and how the loaf turned out. Over time, your baking history becomes a reference built from your own kitchen.
- Free keeps up to 5 saved bakes — real entries, real notes.
- Lab+ adds an unlimited journal and personal Insights based on the history you record.
Journal · recorded bakes
Free · up to 5 saved
Insights
Lab+
Personal Recipes
Your recipes. Your craft. Your way.
Build your own formulas, refine every version, and turn your favorite recipes into repeatable bakes.
- Build your formula — work with ingredients, baker’s percentages, and preferments.
- Capture the details — add cover, gallery, and step photographs.
- Refine over time — preserve recipe versions as your technique evolves.
- Bake with confidence — start a bake or create a plan from your recipe.
Start with 3 personal recipes on Free. Unlock unlimited recipes with Lab+.
Formula snapshot
- Flour500 g
- Water350 g
- Salt10 g
- Starter (100%)100 g
- Hydration72.7%
A finalized recipe keeps its formula, photos, and version history together.
Learn
Understand the why behind the bake.
The Knowledge Library is a flat reference: 34 articles across 9 categories, each number kept with the source that gives it. The core library is Free in full; deeper reference content sits in Lab+.
Grounded in the Bakeryss artisan sourdough guidesKnowledge Library
34 articles·9 categories
A flat knowledge library: 34 articles across 9 categories, each written standalone and searched as a whole. Grounded in the Bakeryss artisan sourdough guides.
Plans
Free, and Lab+ — nothing else
Two plans only. Free is a genuinely useful sourdough workspace; Lab+ is the deeper planning, history and reference workspace on top of it. The full matrix lives on the pricing page.
Free
Free$0 forever
Five calculators, a starter, two rescue trees, the free recipe library and the full Knowledge Library — genuinely useful from the first loaf.
- Hydration calculator
- Baker's percentage calculator
- Recipe scaling calculator
- Starter feeding calculator
- Dough temperature calculator
- Diagnose — core trees
- Starter — 1 active
- Journal — up to 5 saved bakes
- Recipes — free library
- Learn — knowledge library
Sourdough Lab+
Lab+$6.99/monthor$49.99/year
Full Bake Planner, all six diagnose trees, unlimited journal and Insights, and the Lab+ reference library.
- Flour blend calculator
- Inclusion calculator
- Bake Planner
- Diagnose — all trees
- Starter — unlimited
- Journal — unlimited
- Learn — Lab+ reference
- Insights — history
- The ebook Store discount is planned - Store purchasing isn’t open yet.
Product principles
How Sourdough Lab stays honest
- 01
You can see every number.
Calculations trace back to their formulas and your inputs — every result shows the math that produced it.
- 02
Signals over clocks.
Fermentation estimates are starting points with confirmation signals — the dough says when, not the timestamp.
- 03
Honest starting points.
Recipe figures are baselines from the guide, not test-kitchen guarantees — and we say so plainly.
Your next loaf can teach the one after it.
Record what you did, change one variable at a time, and let the pattern point the way to a better bake. Free to start — no credit card.