Brian Smith of Lincolnton, North Carolina has logged more than 200 sourdough batches in a spiral notebook. Not a spreadsheet. Not an app. A spiral notebook — the kind you can buy at any dollar store — that sits on the kitchen counter next to his cast-iron combo cooker every weekend he bakes.
The notebook has columns. Ambient temperature at the start of bulk fermentation. Hydration percentage. The time he fed his starter, Clyde, the night before. Bulk fermentation start and end. Shaping time. Fridge time. Oven temperature and steam setup. Score pattern. Result notes. And a column at the far right he just calls “Next time,” which is the column that matters most.
Why a Notebook Instead of an App
Smith has been asked this. The honest answer is that he started the notebook in March 2020, when he was learning from YouTube videos and written guides, and writing things down was the only way to keep track of what he had done. He had no system yet. He just had a loaf that came out wrong and no memory of exactly why.
He wrote down what he could reconstruct. Then he wrote down the next batch while it was happening. After the third or fourth entry, he realized the notebook was already more useful than anything else he had tried. So he kept going.
The advantage of a physical notebook, he has found, is that it requires no navigation. It is open on the counter. You write in it with a pen. You do not have to unlock a phone or remember which app you were using last time. It is always in the same place, and the previous entry is always one page-turn away.
What the Notebook Has Taught Him
The most useful thing the notebook has taught him is that ambient temperature is the single most variable element in home sourdough baking — more variable than hydration, more variable than flour brand, more variable than technique. A loaf baked in his kitchen in July behaves differently than the same formula baked in January, even though the recipe is identical, because the dough ferments faster when the kitchen is warmer.
He knows this because he has 200 data points proving it. Summer entries cluster around shorter bulk fermentation windows. Winter entries stretch longer. The “Next time” column tracks adjustments he made and whether they worked. It took about 30 entries before the pattern became clear enough that he could predict, rather than just react.
He also knows, from the notebook, exactly when his starter Clyde is performing at its best — how many hours after feeding, at what kitchen temperature, Clyde is most active. That knowledge came from writing down the starter’s behavior alongside every other variable, then looking back across a season of entries to find the pattern.
The Entry He Refers to Most
About 40 entries in, Smith baked a loaf that he describes as the best he had made up to that point — open crumb, good crust, the kind of sour that sits at the back of the mouth without being aggressive. He wrote everything down in detail. Temperature, timing, hydration, every step.
Two weeks later, the weather had changed. He tried to replicate the loaf exactly and got something noticeably different — still good, but not the same. He went back to the notebook and added a note at the bottom of that entry: “This formula is a summer formula. Do not expect identical results in cooler temps.” That annotation has saved him from chasing an unrepeatable result more than once.
He has notebooks from other parts of his life — he kept records in the payroll office long before he kept records in the kitchen. But the sourdough notebook is the one he finds himself turning back to most often, because bread is the kind of thing where you can forget the details quickly if you do not write them down, and the details are the whole point.
Brian Smith writes about the details behind his sourdough practice — including the starter named Clyde that anchors every bake and why fermentation runs on its own clock. Learn more at About Brian Smith Lincolnton.