Baking bread, planned around your day.
Tell Crumb how much time you actually have to handle the dough, what you want to bake, and when you want it out of the oven. We work backwards from there, choosing hydration, fold count, fermentation length and timing to maximise the chance of a beautiful loaf at the first attempt.
Start planning your bake →What are you baking, and when?
Start with the outcome. Everything else is calculated backwards from this.
How much time can you spend with the dough?
Active time only, not waiting time. Be honest. We'll trade folds for fermentation length.
Your kitchen and your flour
Temperature is the single biggest variable in fermentation timing.
Advanced toggles
Crumb recommends a hydration based on your archetype, skill level, and kitchen temperature. Override only if you know what you're doing. High hydration is harder to handle.
Your skill and how many loaves
We adjust hydration limits and instruction depth based on your experience.
Backwards from the loaf you want.
Most recipes hand you a fixed schedule and hope it fits your day. Crumb does the opposite. It starts from your finish time and your handling budget, then works backwards to choose every variable.
Pick a process archetype
Sandwich, open-crumb, focaccia, pizza: each has its own hydration window, salt level, and shaping style. Your purpose dictates the dough's character.
Match folds to your time
Got 20 minutes? No folds. Strength comes from a vigorous initial mix. An hour? Classic 3-fold pattern. We never recommend more touch points than you can actually do.
Set inoculation by timeline
Short schedule = more starter (faster ferment). Long retard = less starter (controlled ferment). Picked from a regime table validated against the dataset.
Predict bulk from temperature
Q10 ≈ 2: every 10°C swing roughly doubles or halves fermentation rate. We compute bulk hours from your dough temperature and inoculation, not from a fixed timer.
Stay in the failproof zone
The 207-recipe analysis shows scores drop sharply above 75% hydration and below 65°F bulk temp. We cap and adjust based on your skill.
Render a real schedule
Timestamped touch-points fitted to your day. Every step is labelled active or passive, with sensory cues so you know what to look for.
207 recipes. One pattern.
Every assumption in Crumb is calibrated against a dataset of 207 sourdough recipes from publicly available YouTube creators, food blogs, cookbooks, and community forums; each scored by sentiment analysis on user comments.
Sourced from various publicly available recipes and methods: The Perfect Loaf, Joshua Weissman, Bake with Jack, Tartine, King Arthur Baking, The Bread Code, Brian Lagerstrom, Foodbod, Pantry Mama, Farmhouse on Boone, Reddit r/Sourdough, The Fresh Loaf forums, and 200+ more.
Built with love for baking by Vivid Sourdough