The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Intro and a request for feedback

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Intro and a request for feedback

Hi Bakers, I've been trying to perfect my sourdough loaf for about 2 years now and while I've gotten close to excellent results a few times I'm still far from mastery or consistency.

While trying to improve my results I've been experimenting with a few apps and also been trying to build one of my own to help me progress faster.

I'm here today to ask for anyone who is passionate about perfecting their sourdough bread to share with me some of their own struggles so that I can improve my app and make it more useful to anyone.

I'm in a university program for this and will take no more than 5-15 minutes of your time, I'm not selling anything.

Thank you,

David

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

How would you vision an app improving sourdough? 

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Hi MiniOven, thank you for replying.

First and foremost the app will allow you to track your bakes to refer to them later, and do calculations in one place.

How do you track your bakes if you do? Also how do you do calculations/keep recipes?

 

riserofthebre4ds's picture
riserofthebre4ds

So the app is basically a notepad and calculator but focused on bread? Seems to me if you did this more broad like "cooking" or "baking" there would be a larger target audience. Maybe it's just a side project though? 

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Thanks for the suggestion, I think at this point I want to make sure the app is useful for sourdough bakers and then make it applicable to broader recipes. I need someone who has an Android phone and would like to test out my app.

tiredalloveragain's picture
tiredalloveragain

I just use Excel.  For nearly 2 years now, I have tracked recipe and results for nearly every loaf of sourdough, yeast bread, or other baking including (all from scratch) cakes, brownies, or anything else.  There have been times I forget but that's always when I do just what I did the last few times so I don't really miss much.

I calculate hydration, total weight, total cost (though I only update ingredient costs every few months so it's reasonably close on cost but not exactly. 

The downside of Excel, at least for me, is that, though I almost always capture what I did, I don't always capture notes about how it turned out.  The really bad ones, I add notes.  The really goods ones I note and change the background to green so I can, hopefully, do it again. 

What I haven't added to my spreadsheet, that you might consider in your app, is tracking results and tying recipe changes to the successes or failures that prompted the recipe change - in other words, if I flop one day, how did I adjust the next time or times and how did it change the outcomes.  It's not always enough just to know what recipe worked; what I'd really like to get to is what are the effects of changes in between terrible and pretty good.  That would give me the information to try new things for specific variations our outcomes I like, rather than one single measure of a good loaf.

 

I have no idea what your app would be like but there's an app for my clothes washing machine that requires access to my phone records, current and historical location, files, pictures, etc.  When I contacted the manufacturer to ask why they needed such access, they said that custom load configurations could be based on location information.  I guess they think that I take my washing machine everywhere I take my phone... Or, they're just data mining those who install their app, like most other apps.  Point is, and my suggestion is, keep your app free of  data collection and it might be very useful.  Make it more about the data mining and selling, even if anonymized, data, I sure would not use it.

Keep us posted and good luck with the project.

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Thank you for such a detailed feedback. I agree, Excel can do everything that the app does. in fact for fermentation-time calculation I've used an excel spreadsheet as an inspiration... The app is meant to be an easier alternative to custom Excel spreadsheets and easy-to-use on mobile phones.

For tracking results I've added 5 star rating system, which is an indication of how good the recipe turned out, also you can take pictures and add notes for easier recall.

As for the data collection, I am also very privacy conscious and will do everything in my power not to expose user data. Currently there's only Firebase crash reporting from Google that is default on most apps, other than that I don't collect any data and don't plan to in the future.

The app is currently in the Playstore and if anyone has an Android phone you're more than welcome to try it out get better loaves and give me your suggestions for new features. Here's the link: RecipeDragon

I've been baking regularly and there's one aspect where the app helped me get that coveted open crumb:

I've been making the same loaf mostly tweaking the hydration and hoping to get the open crumb and they always came out more or less the same, somewhat dense, I was taking pictures and documenting my journey but without much improvement.

Then I implemented the fermentation time calculator in the app, a simple Xhours indicator, and lo and behold I realized that for 10% levain and at 20C dough temp, fermentation time is more than 12 hours. No wonder I was getting under-proofed loaves because I'd start around noon and shape around 9pm and put into the fridge before it was ready. Also it gave me another insight - that to speed things up I have to either up the levain amount to 30% or leave the loaf to proof overnight. As a result a few weeks ago I've had an unbelievable crumb the first time in my life, unbelievable experience, I thought I'd never get it.

In the past few weeks I've been experimenting with 50% rye bread, and I have several attempts and I use the app as a record keeping tool and it helps me tweak the dough amount if I'm making just one loaf or more for friends. I'm open to suggestions on which direction to take and how to improve the app, many things can be done...

 

 

 

 

 

Sir BakesAlot's picture
Sir BakesAlot

I use a combination of Excel and an iOS app called Reminder (not Reminders) to help me with planning, scheduling, recording and analyzing my bakes. I’m just sort of anal that way but it really helps me for future bakes if something works better or doesn’t work. E.g. I will record things like room ambient temperature and humidity, flour temp, weight of final dough, etc. The Reminder app has timers and alarms in which you can record a voice message like, “Start Proofing”, so it’s easy to multitask and not forget a step in your bake.

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Thanks for the message, I'm amazed to learn how everyone manages their complex sourdough process. I'm thinking of incorporating reminders somehow into the recipes, but I don't have it yet.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

And starts telling me when it's ready, I am in big sourdough starter abusing trouble!

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Agreed, but what if the app allowed you to get instant hydration calculation, and gave a you a fermentation duration prediction, would that change your mind?

DavidLoafTweaker's picture
DavidLoafTweaker

Guys I made a two minute video to show what the app is about. Is this something you find at all useful?

https://youtu.be/u9fI6-KpPOI