What's a strong starter? How do you keep a starter for those who are trying to maybe emulate what you've done or experiment in the same ways that you have?

Sure.

Yeah.

So my starter maintenance routine has changed over time and I've done just tons of experiments with different starter feeding ratios, temperature, hydration.

I have one of the, I think one of the most sophisticated home starter labs out there.

I don't know if you've seen any of the experiments that I do, but I basically built a lab where I can actually test the amount of carbon dioxide that's generated from a starter.

So that's really the true measure of starter strength that you literally cannot approximate any other way.

And I know that we can't cover all of it today, but if you wanted to maybe just go a little bit into that about judging bulk fermentation, where people can go for resources, and just some of the research that you've done on that, I'd love to hear it.

Food Bod, yeah.

She had a book called, uh, yeah, Food Bod.

She had a book called The Sourdough Whisperer, which was incredibly popular, and then she just followed it up with something called The Sourdough Bible.

Elaine's method is kind of the opposite of Tartine, and Elaine's personality is the opposite of Chad Robertson [chuckles].

I mean, she, she just oversimplifies everything as much as possible and says, like, "We're not...

You don't need to complicate sourdough.

Let's just keep it simple." And, you know, she says i-if you bake your loaf and you're asking me, you know, "Is this loaf perfect?" She says, "If you think your loaf is perfect, it's perfect." So I mean, that's like diametrically opposed to, you know, people like myself who are chasing this unbelievably perfect aesthetic and the perfect flavor and the perfect shape and all that, and Elaine's just like, "Hey, we're just trying to make bread here." So I think that's a great contrast, uh, to the Tartine method, and I, I send a lot of people to, to Elaine's, uh, books or her, or her website or her social media when they're asking for a beginner recipe.

And I guess, Tom, following up with what you were saying, is, like, do you now see the aesthetics of bread shifting, and, like, where are they going?