08/11/2026
Chapter 80.5 – The Crumbs Have Spoken 💛🍞
Chapter 80 was about ten loaves.
Ten loaves made in my little kitchen in Michigan, each one with someone specific waiting for it. There was flour everywhere, the dishwasher ran approximately 4,762 times 😂, and by the end I was pretty sure I had temporarily turned my house into a small bakery.
Then I packed them all up and took them to New Jersey.
There was just one little problem…
I didn’t get to cut any of them.
And if you bake sourdough, you understand the agony. 😂
You can admire the oven spring. You can stare at the blisters. You can turn a loaf around seventeen times and convince yourself it’s beautiful.
But until somebody cuts that sucker open…
YOU DON’T KNOW.
So I did what any perfectly reasonable sourdough baker would do.
I harassed my family for crumb shots. 😂
And slowly, the evidence—and the reviews—started rolling in.
🫐🍋 Blueberry Bliss & a Little Kiss opened up beautifully. Soft and airy, with blueberries scattered throughout and exactly the kind of crumb I love seeing in one of my sweet loaves.
🌶️ Kick’n Kndnss made me very happy too. A beautiful crumb with all that cheesy, jalapeño goodness tucked inside.
🍯 Made with Love & Honey, the loaf I spent weeks tinkering with specifically for Brittany, gave me the beautiful soft crumb I’d been hoping for.
🍫 Then there was Triple Chocolate Kndnss.
Chocolate sourdough packed with even more chocolate because apparently regular chocolate wasn’t enough. 😂
Augusta toasted herself a slice and sent me her official review:
“Yummy af also.”
I’ll take it. 😂
And then there’s the loaf that started because Augusta asked me:
“Can you do a three cheese mac n cheese one?”
Because apparently she enjoys giving me assignments. 😂
🧀 The Big Cheese Kndnss was probably one of the biggest wild cards of this entire bake. Putting actual mac & cheese into sourdough sounded slightly unhinged even to me, and I genuinely didn’t know what everyone would think once they ate it. I opted to leave out the macaroni. Instead I went with a “tastes like” mac n cheese.
Apparently, I didn’t need to worry.
“This mac n cheese is amazing.”
Then…
“OMG.”
Followed by…
“You need to make more definitely.”
And finally:
“It’s the bomb. 💣”
Mike even sent along a “thank you soooo much for that!!!!”
Sooooo… I think The Big Cheese Kndnss has officially earned itself another bake. 😂🧀
Then there was Berry Loved Kndnss. 🫐🍓
She’s beautiful.
She’s delicious.
Hunter liked her.
But I’m still not completely happy with her.
When I finally got to taste this one myself, the crumb was denser than Test #3. And even though Hunter was perfectly happy with it, I immediately knew what I wanted to change.
More water.
That’s one of the things I’ve come to love about this whole sourdough adventure. A loaf doesn’t have to be bad for me to know it can be better.
Sometimes everyone else is happily eating it while I’m standing there staring at the crumb thinking…
Yep. I know exactly what I’m changing next time. 😂
And then came Raisin the Kndnss.
I asked my brother Chris for a crumb shot.
And unlike certain other members of my family who apparently interpreted “crumb shot” as “take a picture somewhere in the general vicinity of the inside of the bread” 😂, Chris and Michelle understood the assignment.
And OH. MY. GOODNESS.
That cinnamon swirl. 😍
The raisins. The cinnamon chips. The soft crumb.
It was one of those moments where I saw the picture and thought:
YES. That’s what I wanted it to look like.
And Chris and Michelle weren’t interested in merely photographing it. 😂
That very same morning, Raisin the Kndnss was sliced, toasted, buttered and sitting alongside eggs at their breakfast table.
Chris told me:
“The cinnamon raisin bread is delicious 🤤 thank you.”
Michelle quickly corrected the record:
“No Shelly. I LOVE it!!!” Because “I’m so happy you liked it” wasn’t emphasized enough.
😂❤️
And then she told me she was just sad that we live so far away.
That one got me. 🥹
But before I wrap up this giant baking adventure, I need to give credit where credit is due.
Most of these ten loaves were made with Sophia. ❤️
Chloe absolutely deserves an honorable mention because I know she handled a couple of them. Which ones?
Ummm…
Somewhere around loaf number six, apparently I stopped taking starter attendance. 😂
But this bake was overwhelmingly Sophia’s.
And when I look at all of these crumb shots now—the open crumb, the oven spring, the swirls, the loaves absolutely loaded with inclusions—I think it’s safe to say the little starter I built from scratch has officially proven herself.
Sophia understood the assignment, too. ❤️🍞
When I first started making sourdough, I worried about hydration and fermentation and dough temperature. I worried about shaping and scoring and oven spring. I worried about whether my starter was ready and whether my dough was doing what I thought it was doing.
Okay…
I still worry about all of those things. 😂
Obviously.
I’m the woman requesting crumb shots from people several states away.
But somewhere along the way, this became about something more.
I made ten loaves in my kitchen in Michigan.
I made each one with someone specific in mind.
I packed them up, drove them hundreds of miles to New Jersey, and handed them to people I love.
And then I got to watch those loaves show up on their kitchen tables.
Sliced.
Toasted.
Buttered.
Shared over breakfast.
And accompanied by texts telling me they loved them.
Not every crumb was perfect.
There are already things I want to change because, well… have we met? 😂
But something I made with my own two hands became part of a meal, a morning, and a memory for someone I love.
And I think that’s my favorite result from this entire bake.
Turns out…
those are my favorite kind of crumb shots. 💛🍞
