Loaf&Levain

A complete bake planner

Sourdough schedule, calibrated.

Plan your bake from levain feed to oven, calibrated to your room temperature, hydration, and inoculation. Track your bake live. Export to your calendar. Built for bakers who measure, not guess.

Sourdough timing isn't fixed — it's arithmetic. The same dough that finishes bulk in five hours at 24 °C takes about eleven at 16 °C, and a dough with 10% starter takes about a third longer than one with 20%. Most "why did my loaf fail" problems are really timing problems: a schedule written for a warm kitchen, run in a cold one. This planner does that arithmetic for your kitchen so you can stop guessing.

Enter your flour, hydration, room temperature, starter strength and whether you're cold-retarding, and it builds a step-by-step timeline from levain feed to bake — with realistic bulk and proof windows for your conditions, not a generic "4–6 hours." The model is a temperature curve (rate about 2.2× per 8 °C), the same rule experienced bakers carry in their heads.

Four tools, one workflow:

Schedule — your full timeline, forwards from a start time or backwards from "out of the oven at 18:00 on Saturday."
Starter — when to feed so your levain peaks exactly when you mix.
Recipe Lab — baker's percentages, true total hydration (including the levain), and desired-dough-temperature water.
Live Bake — follow the current bake step by step, with reminders for each stage.

New to sourdough? Start at 70–75% hydration with bread flour and a 20% starter, and read the knowledge base (opens in a new tab) for the reasoning behind every number.

This calculator needs JavaScript to build your bake schedule. You can still read our free sourdough guides — bulk fermentation by temperature, hydration, starters and troubleshooting — without it.

Plan your bake

Inputs · auto-saved

Ready at… Start now

Ready at

When the loaf comes out of the oven.

Recipe preset tap to load

Recipe

Flour / loaf g

Loaves ×

Hydration %

Salt %

Levain %

Ripe levain (100% hydration) as a % of the flour you add. How much starter to use (opens in a new tab)

Conditions

Room temperature 22°C

Dough temperature after mixing optional °C

Leave it blank to use the room temperature. When planning, enter the temperature you expect (your DDT target, or what you measured last time); after you mix in the starter and salt, measure the center of the dough with an instant-read thermometer. The calculator then assumes the dough warms or cools toward the room during bulk and adjusts the bulk time.

Starter readiness

Timing

Cold retard 12 h

Your schedule will appear here

Pick a preset or set your inputs, then generate.

Feed your starter

From fridge to peak

Target

Final amount needed g

Reserve for next bake g

Plan

Feed count

Final feed ratio

Timing

Room temperature 22°C

Ready at

Your feeding plan will appear here

Set target amount and timing, then build the plan.

Recipe lab

Baker's percentages

Base

Total flour g

Hydration %

Salt %

Levain %

Flour blend total = 100%

White / bread %

Whole wheat %

Rye %

Spelt %

Blend total 100%

Inclusions optional

Name

Amount %

DDT calculator water temp

Target dough temp °C

Flour temp °C

Room temp °C

Friction (mixing) °C

Your recipe will appear here

Adjust the percentages and calculate.

Step alerts need the full calculator: open it on Loaf & Levain (opens in a new tab).

No active bake

Generate a schedule first, then start the bake to track it live.

Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Links to amazon.com on this page carry our affiliate tag; links to other Amazon stores do not. We choose the equipment tip from your room temperature and the model's prediction, not from hands-on product testing.

Making pizza? Try the pizza dough calculator → (opens in a new tab)