Sourdough starter at the county fair demo made me ditch my digital scale
Last summer I was doing a bread demo at the fairgrounds in Des Moines and this old baker next to me just scooped flour by hand, no scale, no measuring cups even. His loaves came out with better oven spring than anything I'd made in 5 years of weighing to the gram. I still think precision matters for consistency at home, but has anyone else found that relaxing the numbers a bit actually improves your crumb and crust?
Did you watch how he handled the dough too, or just the scooping? I had the same thing happen at a bakery in Ames where the guy just went by feel and his loaves had this open crumb I could never get with my scale. Been eyeballing my water more lately and honestly my bread got better once I stopped stressing over every gram.