Why We Score Every Loaf by Hand

Every loaf that leaves our kitchen gets one last touch before the oven: a quick, decisive cut with a razor across the top. That cut is called a score, and it's where our name comes from.

A well-fermented dough is full of trapped gas. In a hot oven, that gas expands fast, and if you don't tell the loaf where to open, it tears wherever the crust happens to be weakest. The score is a controlled release. It says: open here, rise this way.

When you pick up your bread and see that crisp ear curling off the crust, that's the score doing its job. It's a small act of intention at the very end of a two-day process, which honestly describes most of what we do here.