profile

The Perfect Loaf 🍞

🍞 Notes from the Grain Gathering, PLUS easy stone fruit bakes

Published about 19 hours ago • 3 min read

Notes from the Grain Gathering; stone fruit bakes

I'm back home and back to baking after a couple of weeks in the Pacific Northwest—most of it, it feels like, spent five feet off the ground in the back of a solar-powered bread truck.

In and out of talks, masterclasses, happenstance encounters with so many great folks in the baking space, and a few themes stuck out at me:

  • who actually gets paid for a $10 loaf
  • what wheat breeders optimize for (and why grocery flour tastes the way it does)
  • what any of it changes for those of us baking at home

If you've never attended a Grain Gathering (it was my first, and the first one in 8 years!), I turned all of this into a post I think you'll love to read.

In this week's newsletter:

  • Essay: My time at the Grain Gathering in 2026
  • Recipes: Clafoutis, baguettes, sourdough cookies
  • Baking Tip: As a baker, how do you keep your kitchen clean?

🌾 Grain Gathering 2026

Three days in the Skagit with a congregation of the grain-obsessed—breeders, farmers, millers, and bakers, every link in the chain in one place.

Check out what I saw, learned, and came away with:

🍑 Sourdough Clafoutis

Doesn't it look incredible with peaches? Well, it tasted just the same. Such an easy way to use any stone fruit you have in the kitchen or at the market (my favorite being peaches and cherries).

🍞 Sourdough Baguettes

I've been working from this recipe, adding 20% whole hard red wheat to my trials in preparation for Italy. Baguettes are certainly finicky, but making them at home is incredibly satisfying (and tasty).

🍞 Green olive filoncini (twisted baguettes)

Or... A low-key baguette, these taste just as great and are so much easier to shape—there literally is no wrong way to do it. Get 99% of the baguette vibes with 1% of the shaping stress.

🍞 In case you missed it: Sourdough chocolate chip cookies

If it's still hot as heck where you are, these don't take too much oven time!

Join The Baker's Corner

Are you unsure if your starter is ready for baking? Or how to change a recipe to include mix-ins, scale it up or down, or just about anything else? Come join the community and ask away—we're all there to help. Plus, get all my best baking tools and discounts!

💬 Member Discussion of the Week

Here's something I literally HATE. Cleaning the sourdough containers. How do you do it?

First, be sure to clean your containers immediately after removing your dough, starter, or levain from them. I do my best to scrape as much flour/water as I can from the container, and then I'll take it right to the sink and wash it out with soap and warm water. This prevents almost all of the dough from going down the drain, and it's much easier to wash containers when the dough is still moist and pliable.

If the dough has dried in the container, I will put a little soap and warm water inside, let it soak for 30 minutes or so until it's softened, and then wipe out and clean the container.

If you have a mixer that doesn't have a removable bowl, you can take it into the sink. It's even more important to clean and wipe out that bowl immediately after removing your dough. Once the dough dries, it's tough to take out!

I prefer using a reusable cloth to clean all these items, and then I wash the cloth in the sink. A tight-knit cloth is best for this; it makes it easier to remove the dough.

It's essential to be aware of the piping in your kitchen. If you have "sensitive" pipes, scrape out as much dough as possible from your bowls before washing them in the sink.

🛟 2 Ways I Can Help You Today

Stay cool and happy baking!

P.S. Here's a video of the first loaf I made when I got home.

​Join me in the member's community, master sourdough, and get baker's perks.

Thank you for subscribing 🩶. Sent from Maurizio at The Perfect Loaf, 8100 Wyoming Blvd NE Ste M4, #343, Albuquerque, NM 87113.
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​

The Perfect Loaf 🍞

Maurizio Leo

Want to make bakery-quality sourdough bread from home? Subscribe for the best sourdough guides and recipes to take your bread from ordinary to incredible.

Read more from The Perfect Loaf 🍞

For a limited time:Pre-order and get my bonus pack I've spent the past several years taking everything I know about sourdough and applying it directly to pizza in the home kitchen. If you're a sourdough baker, my new pizza book will show you how to use all you know (plus plenty I'll show you) to make the best pizza you've ever pulled from your home oven. If you're completely new to pizza, just like with my first book, I'll walk you through the entire process from scratch, with help all along...

4 days ago • 1 min read

Sourdough discard recipes to beat the heat I just finished handmixing the dough for a large 2kg miche, and the readout on my thermometer kind of freaked me out a bit: 82°F final dough temp. Oh, my. I realize many people take a break from baking in the summer, but I can't help myself (and I have some great recipes coming soon!). For those taking a short break in July, this roundup is a collection of my fav discard recipes that avoid super-hot, lengthy bakes in the home oven. (If you're...

29 days ago • 3 min read

My July 4th baking list is here Kids' fireworks: check. Plans to watch as many World Cup games as possible: check. Baking agenda: check. For me the holiday comes down to two bakes. A focaccia, dimpled and swimming in good olive oil (see below), and a fruit galette for the group, whatever stone fruit looks best at the market (my peaches not quite ready yet!). Both are the kind of thing I can start today, finish tomorrow, and then set down and forget about while the oven does the work. Which is...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read