Naturally leavened · 910 g loaves
Every weight scales off one four-loaf ratio. Set the count and the list follows.
Pin the one moment you actually know — the rest of the three days arranges itself around it.
Your kit and your kitchen — change any of these.
The bulk window is timed from a 3–5 hr ferment at 72°F dough and scaled from there: every 17°F warmer roughly halves it, every 17°F cooler roughly doubles it. Folds stay on their fixed clock.
Dough and room are set separately. The dough starts where you measured it and drifts toward the room over a long bulk, so the pace runs off the midpoint of the two — set them equal and that's just your dough temp. A warm dough in a cold kitchen finishes later than the probe suggests, and the gap between the two sliders is how much later. It's an estimate either way: finish by the dough, jiggly and domed, up roughly 50%.
The three numbers under the target are set by your kit, not measured from the dough: the preheat, the fridge stay, and the feed-to-mix gap. The cold retard has no fixed length — 8–16 hr all work, and longer only deepens the sour — which is why the early end of the mix window is the safe end.
The pots heat while the dough is still in the fridge, so the loaves go in cold and the preheat costs you nothing on the clock. Bake is two batches, 45 min each.
The two parts of the bake the clock can’t do for you: how you open the loaf, and how you keep the base off the floor of the oven.
One off-centre cut running two-thirds the length, blade held almost flat to the skin. Every bit of the spring goes into one seam, which is why it makes the biggest ear of any pattern here.
Two cuts straight down. The loaf opens in four directions instead of one, so it is far more forgiving of a slightly under- or over-proofed dough than the single slash.
A spine with chevrons branching back from it. Shallow by necessity — deep chevrons tear into each other — so cut the spine a little deeper if you still want lift.
Two sets of parallel cuts crossing at 45°. The expansion is spread across every square, so you get no ear at all — but no blowout down the side either.
One continuous curve worked out from the centre. The shallowest of the five and purely decorative — it needs a loaf that was already going to rise well on its own.
Score cold, straight out of the fridge, right before the lid goes on. Chilled dough holds the line instead of dragging on the blade — which is the whole reason the schedule keeps the loaves in the fridge until the moment they go in.
Most of a burnt base is radiant heat off the oven floor, and the lower third is the hottest part of a home oven. Preheat the pots on the middle rack and bake them there. This alone fixes it most of the time.
Parchment under the loaf, and a second sheet pan slid under the dutch oven once the lid comes off. Two air gaps beat any amount of semolina or rice flour on the base.
Load at 500°F, drop to 450°F the moment the lid comes off. Past that point the crust colours from the top, and every extra minute at full heat only goes into the bottom.