Hi Michael, room temperature is generally accepted to be between 20C and 22C (68F to 72F). This is also a nice temperature for sourdough.

If your room is much outside these temperatures then you will need to adjust accordingly. You could use baker’s percentage to adjust the amount of starter, although this gets a bit tricky.

However, I do find that you have a decent magin of error with the bulk (first) prove. The most important part is getting the final prove (after balling) as good as possible.

In fact, you can do your second prove earlier or later depending on how your first prove has gone. This is a fairly straightforward way to adjust timings.

Also, if the dough is overproofing, you can always knock the dough back to reset the prove. That’s why if anything, I tend to prefer working with overproofing dough.

The more you work with dough, though, the more you’ll build up a sixth sense for this sort of thing. So the best advice I can give you is to experiment (and listen to the dough).

Good luck and thanks for the question.

Hi, thanks for the question. It can be a bit confusing, but the percentage of starter refers to the amount of flour in the starter compared to the total flour in the dough.

Some people just compare overall starter weight to total flour weight but traditionally just the flour in the starter is compared to the total flour. I hope this makes sense and thank you for the kind words!

Hi Tom, you can use all the same recipes for a spiral mixer. I would just recommend adding all the water (with the salt and yeast) to the mixer first and then slowly adding the flour over the course of 2 or 3 minutes as the mixer is working. This should help the development of the dough. Thanks for the question!