Mastering Sourdough at Home
Stop buying expensive loaves and start baking your own tangy, crusty bread. Learn to keep a starter alive and bake your first masterpiece using just flour, water, and salt.
Like Duolingo, but for Mastering Sourdough at Home. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 26 levels across 3 sections, about 52 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Bake Your First Loaf, Perfect Your Crust and Crumb, and Keeping the Magic Alive. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Mastering Sourdough at Home
- Wild yeast consumes sugars to produce carbon dioxide gas for lift
- Lactic acid bacteria produce the characteristic sour flavor and acids
- Feeding provides new fuel for the yeast to multiply
- Peak activity is marked by maximum volume and gas retention
- How wild yeast and bacteria work together to transform dough
- The visual and physical lifecycle of a healthy starter after feeding
- Wild yeast and bacteria are already present on the grain/flour
- The environment (air and hands) contributes to the ecosystem but isn't the sole source
- The source of the microorganisms in a sourdough culture
- The initial mix only needs to incorporate all dry flour into a 'shaggy mass'
- Salt tightens gluten and can slow down initial hydration
- An autolyse period makes the dough more extensible and easier to knead later
- Smoothness and strength develop during the rest and subsequent folds, not the first mix
- Flour and water must be combined first to hydrate
- The functional benefit of delaying salt addition during the initial mix
- The rest period occurs before salt or starter are introduced
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Mastering Sourdough at Home the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What do the bacteria in your starter do to make it taste special?
Get it right to open this lesson and 25 more in the app.
Where Mastering Sourdough at Home takes you
- 1
Bake Your First Loaf
- The Simple Secret of Wild Yeast
- Mixing Your First Dough
- The Fold: Building Strength Without Kneading
- Using Your Oven Like a Professional Bakery
- 2
Perfect Your Crust and Crumb
- Reading the Bubbles: When to Bake
- Shaping Your Loaf for a Better Rise
- Scoring Designs with a Blade
- How to Get a Crispy, Golden Crust
- The Patience of Cooling and Slicing
- Troubleshooting a Flat Loaf
- 3
Keeping the Magic Alive
- Feeding and Naming Your Starter
- The Science of Fermentation
- Creative Ways to Use Leftover Starter
3 sections · 13 units · 26 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Mastering Sourdough at Home is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Mastering Sourdough at Home today.
Download Tomo, search Mastering Sourdough at Home, and play your first lesson in under a minute.