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What does it take to build an incredibly open, delicate sourdough crumb when you are working with different flour, a different climate, and different equipment than the bakers who originally inspired you?

This week on Saving Bread, I am joined by Anujay Krishna, a baker in Lucknow, India, whose beautifully open, lacy country loaves have made him one of the most requested guests on the podcast.

Anujay did not grow up eating this style of bread. His early relationship with bread came through the rotis and parathas made in his family kitchen. He discovered sourdough years later online, built his own starter, and began learning through videos, baking communities, feedback, experimentation, and a lot of repetition.

That process eventually became a bread style that is unmistakably his.

We talk about what it means to learn sourdough when the flour, temperature, humidity, equipment, and ingredients available to you are different from the conditions behind the formulas you are studying.

Then we get into the dough.

Anujay shares how he evaluates a new flour before committing to a hydration, including a small flour and water test at several hydration levels. We talk about the difference between elasticity and extensibility, why protein percentage alone does not tell you how a flour will perform, and what he is looking for when he checks a windowpane.

We also get into his approach to gluten development. Anujay prefers to mix his dough to full development and then allow fermentation to inflate the structure he has already built. Instead of folding on a schedule, he waits for the dough to relax and only folds when he believes the dough needs it.

We talk about:

How he maintains his sourdough starter in the heat of Lucknow

Why he moved away from expensive imported flour and learned to work with flour available in India

How to test the hydration potential of an unfamiliar flour

Elasticity versus extensibility

Why flour protein quality can matter more than the number printed on the bag

Long cold autolyse for hand mixed dough

Managing dough temperature during mixing

Full gluten development versus relying heavily on folds

Why too many folds can work against an already strong dough

High hydration sourdough in the 85 to 86 percent range

Using a larger percentage of younger levain

Why bulk fermentation is one of the most important parts of his process

Gentle shaping and preserving the structure created during fermentation

Accounting for continued fermentation while dough cools inside a home refrigerator

Cold retard timing

Adapting country dough into a sandwich loaf without mixing an entirely different dough

Building a sourdough bakery and bread culture in Lucknow

And throughout the conversation, one idea keeps coming back: becoming a better baker is not about copying somebody else’s numbers.

It is about getting enough repetitions that you begin to recognize your own flour, your own starter, your own environment, and your own dough.

Anujay learned from bakers working in completely different conditions and then adapted what he learned until the bread became his own. That may be the most valuable lesson in the entire conversation.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Anujay Krishna on Instagram
@anujayanstar

Trevor Jay Wilson, author of Open Crumb Mastery
Open Crumb Mastery

The Bread Code by Hendrik
The Bread Code

TWF Flours in India
TWF Flours

TWF T55 Bread F