Brian Smith Lincolnton | He Keeps a Notebook for Every Loaf. Here's What It Says.
The first entry in Brian Smith's baking notebook is from March 2020. Ambient temperature: 68 degrees. Hydration: 75 percent. Bulk ferment: four hours. The assessment at the bottom reads: too dense. There are more than two hundred entries after that one. They are written in the same even hand Smith uses at work, in a spiral notebook he bought at a drugstore and has never seen a reason to replace. The Logic Behind the Log Brian Smith of Lincolnton, North Carolina is a payroll and benefits administrator for the Lincoln County school system. For more than twenty years, his job has been making sure numbers hold. When he started baking sourdough in the spring of 2020, he brought the same instinct to the kitchen. The notebook tracks ambient temperature, hydration percentage, bulk fermentation time, oven temperature, and a notes column for what he would change next time. There is almost always something in the notes column. He does not call this precision baking. He calls it not being wil...