A guide for bakers who are ready to stop guessing and start understanding what's actually happening in that bowl.
If you've baked a handful of loaves and something still feels off — your bread comes out differently even when you follow the same recipe — this guide is for you. DoughPace won't fix everything overnight, but it will hand you the one tool that changes everything: a timeline that responds to your actual dough, in your actual kitchen, on your actual schedule.
Here's how to use it. And more importantly, here's why each step matters.
Before You Start: What You Need
Just one tool beyond the app itself: a digital instant-read thermometer. Not a candy thermometer. Not a meat thermometer. A probe thermometer that reads quickly and accurately — something like a Feinbäck digital thermometer or a decent Amazon equivalent. This is the only instrument DoughPace needs from you, and it's worth every penny.
Everything else — the math, the timeline, the fold reminders — DoughPace handles.
Step 1: Set Up Your Bake
When you open DoughPace, you'll land on the Set Up Your Bake screen. This is where you tell the app what it's working with. Take your time here — these choices shape everything that follows.
Initial Dough Temperature
After mixing your flour, water, and starter together, plunge your thermometer into the center of the dough mass and note the temperature. Enter it here using the slider.
Why this matters: Fermentation is driven by biology, not the clock on your wall. Yeast and bacteria work faster when it's warm and slower when it's cool — and the difference is significant. A dough sitting at 68°F is on a completely different schedule than one at 78°F. Without knowing your starting temperature, any timeline you're given is just a guess.
Kitchen / Room Temperature
Slide this to reflect the temperature of your kitchen right now.
Why this matters: Your dough will drift toward room temperature over the course of bulk fermentation. A cool kitchen acts like a gentle brake on fermentation. A warm summer kitchen puts your foot on the accelerator. Room temperature gives DoughPace the context it needs to understand where your dough is headed, not just where it started.
Dough Type
Choose from Plain Sourdough, Savory Inclusions, or Sweet / Enriched.
Why this matters: Inclusions change fermentation in meaningful ways. Cheese and jalapeños introduce fat and capsaicin compounds that slow gluten development. Honey has mild antimicrobial properties that put the brakes on your starter. Sugar competes with yeast for water. DoughPace adjusts your baseline bulk fermentation estimate and your fold schedule accordingly — so a jalapeño-cheddar loaf and a plain country loaf don't get the same timeline.
Starter Type
Choose Liquid (100% hydration, the most common) or Stiff (50-65% hydration, common in Italian traditions).
Why this matters: A stiffer starter ferments more slowly. It's a small adjustment, but over a 5+ hour bulk fermentation it adds up. If you're maintaining a stiff starter, DoughPace adds a little breathing room to your estimate.
First Fold After
Choose how long after mixing you'll do your first fold: 30, 45, 60, 75, or 90 minutes.
Why this matters: Not every baker goes straight from mixing to folding. Some bakers autolyse — mixing flour and water first, then letting it rest before adding the starter. Others add salt after an initial rest and let the dough settle again before the first fold. If you typically rest your dough for an hour before you touch it, setting "First Fold After" to 60 minutes means DoughPace won't alarm you with overdue warnings while your dough is doing exactly what it should be doing — resting.
Use your own process here. If you mix everything at once and fold at 30 minutes, leave it at 30. If you autolyse, add salt, and don't fold until 75 minutes in, set it to 75. The app follows your process; you don't follow the app.
After Shaping, I Plan To…
Choose Same-Day Bake or Overnight Fridge.
Why this matters: If you're cold proofing your shaped dough overnight in the refrigerator, DoughPace will walk you through the Coasting Period — the 4-hour window where your dough slowly winds down to 40°F and builds deeper flavor along the way. It'll also calculate your optimal baking window for the next morning.
The Estimated Bulk Fermentation Time
At the bottom of the setup screen, you'll see a number: your estimated bulk fermentation time based on everything you've entered. This is your starting point. Think of it less as a deadline and more as a compass bearing — the app will adjust it in real time as your bake progresses.
When you're ready, tap Start Tracking Bulk Fermentation.
Step 2: Bulk Fermentation
This is where DoughPace earns its name. Welcome to the main dashboard.
The Dough Pace Gauge
At the top of the screen you'll see a speedometer-style gauge showing your current Dough Pace. There are four possible readings:
- 🐌 Deep Slow (below 62°F / 17°C) — Very cool conditions. Your fermentation is significantly slowed. Consider finding a warmer spot, or settle in for a longer bulk than usual.
- 🪵 Scenic Route (62–72°F / 17–22°C) — Slow and steady. Your dough is taking its time, building deeper flavor and tang along the way. DoughPace adds time to your timeline.
- 🟢 Cruise Control (73–78°F / 23–26°C) — The sweet spot. Your dough is fermenting at an ideal pace and your baseline timeline holds steady.
- 🏎️ Fast Lane (79°F+ / 26°C+) — Running warm. Fermentation is moving quickly, and overproofing becomes a real risk. DoughPace shortens your estimated timeline and asks you to watch closely.
The Bulk Fermentation Timeline
The progress bar shows where you are in your bulk fermentation right now — elapsed time on the left, estimated remaining time on the right. The shaping window time updates as conditions change.
The Fold Schedule
DoughPace builds your fold schedule based on your dough type and your chosen first fold time. Each fold card shows you exactly how long until the next one is due. As you approach a fold, the card turns amber. If you've gone past due, it turns red.
How you fold is entirely up to you. Stretch-and-folds, coil folds, lamination — use whatever technique your dough is asking for. An inclusion-heavy dough like jalapeño-cheddar might want two stretch-and-folds early on and then shift to coil folds as the gluten tightens. A light country loaf might do beautifully with four simple stretch-and-folds. Trust what you feel in the dough, not a prescribed method. DoughPace tracks your timing — your hands handle the technique.
When you complete a fold, tap the circle on the fold card — it fills green and the next fold activates.
After your final fold, let the dough rest undisturbed until the shaping window arrives.
The Mid-Bulk Probe Logger
This is the heart of DoughPace's intelligence. Every time you fold, take your dough temperature and log it here.
Why this matters: Dough temperature changes during bulk fermentation — sometimes significantly. Your kitchen might warm up in the afternoon. The dough itself generates a little heat as fermentation kicks into gear. A dough that started at 74°F might be sitting at 70°F two hours later if you left a window open. Each new temperature reading recalculates your remaining timeline in real time — stretching or contracting it based on what your dough is actually doing right now, not what it was doing when you started.
You don't have to log a reading at every fold — but the more you check in, the more accurate the timeline becomes. Think of it as a conversation between you and the app. The more you tell it, the better it guides you.
When the Shaping Window Arrives
When DoughPace estimates you've reached the shaping window, a green card appears. But here's the most important thing in this entire guide:
Trust the dough, not just the clock.
DoughPace gives you a very well-informed estimate. But fermentation has personality. Before you shape, perform the windowpane test: pull a small piece of dough between your fingers until it's very thin. If it holds without tearing and light passes through, your gluten structure is developed and you're ready. If it tears immediately, give it another 20-30 minutes regardless of what the app says.
DoughPace is your most knowledgeable baking companion. The windowpane test is your final authority.
Step 3: The Coasting Period (Overnight Cold Proof Only)
If you chose Overnight Fridge, after shaping and placing your dough in its banneton, tap Shape & Move to Fridge.
DoughPace will show you the Coasting Period — a 4-hour countdown that tracks your dough as it slowly cools from room temperature down to refrigerator stasis at around 40°F.
Why this matters: Your dough doesn't stop fermenting the moment it hits the fridge. It spends the first few hours slowly winding down, quietly building flavor the whole way. This is where a lot of the complexity and tang in an overnight loaf develops. The Coasting Period visualizer shows you the three stages — still active, halfway cool, and full stasis — so you know exactly what's happening in that cold dark fridge.
At the end of the Coasting Period, DoughPace calculates your Optimal Baking Window for the next morning — typically an 8–14 hour window after you put it in. Score your dough cold, straight from the fridge, and load it into a fully preheated Dutch oven. Cold dough scores more cleanly and holds its shape better going into the oven.
The Bake Summary
At any point during your bake — or at the shaping window — tap the 📋 Summary button in the header. You'll see a complete record of your bake: dough type, starter, all your temperature readings with their pace ratings, your estimated vs. actual bulk time, fold completion, and your baking window if applicable.
Tap Copy to Clipboard to paste it into your notes app, or Print to keep a paper record. Over time, your bake summaries become a personal logbook — and patterns start to emerge. You'll notice your kitchen runs cooler on winter mornings. You'll see that your starter pushes Fast Lane at 77°F rather than 79°F. You'll start to know your dough. That's when the real magic happens.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
DoughPace uses your device's local time automatically. No timezone settings needed — whether you're baking in Ohio or Oslo, the times shown are yours.
You only need a thermometer. No pH meter, no special equipment. The probe is the only tool DoughPace asks of you.
DoughPace is a very smart guide, not a guarantee. It's built on real fermentation biology and gives you far better estimates than any static recipe clock. But your flour, your water, your starter's personality, and your kitchen's microclimate are all variables that belong to you. Use DoughPace's guidance alongside your own developing instincts, not instead of them.
The windowpane test is always the final word. When in doubt, stretch a little piece of dough between your fingers. It doesn't lie.
You've Got This
If you've baked a few loaves and something still feels like a mystery — this is where that mystery starts to unravel. Temperature is the variable that most home bakers are flying blind on. DoughPace gives you visibility into the thing that actually controls your timeline.
Bake by biology, not by the clock. Your dough will thank you. 🍞
Questions? Find me on Instagram @islandthymesoap or drop a comment using the Feedback tab on the Homepage. I read every single one.
