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James Huang has been a tech editor in the bicycle industry since 2005, covering road, mountain, gravel, cargo, and everything in-between. Though he’s spent most of his career writing for others, he’s now venturing out on his own with a solo project on Substack called “n-1”, a play on his philosophy that our goal as cyclists shouldn’t be to have more bikes, but rather to have the right bikes.

James has also been on a bread baking journey, which we have been totally inspired by and salivating over! We wanted to hear all about how his interest in baking bread started. We hope you enjoy (and maybe even try making a loaf yourself this weekend!)

The shock hit me so hard that I can see it in my head as clear as day, 3 1/2 years later. 

There I was in October 2022, standing in the bread aisle at my local grocery store and staring in disgust at the little price tags stuck to the shelves. I was accustomed to things being a little more expensive than average there – hardly surprising as it’s a locally owned chain with just two locations, but that smallness is also why I love going there. It’s more intimate and quirky, I recognize most of the employees I see there, and despite the smaller size, it almost always has what I’m looking for – sometimes even random runs they got on special or something. A fresh haul of oyster mushrooms? Looks like a change in dinner plans! 

But almost $10 for one loaf of sliced bread? Fine, it was organic, but are you freaking kidding me??? 

I kept surveying the different options, my eyes going back and forth, up and down, as if I’d somehow misread something or one of the numbers would magically change if I looked at them enough. But nope, it was what it was, and suddenly the gradually increasing grocery prices I’d been hearing so much about on the news at the time was all too real. 

I was leaving the following morning for a mountain biking trip in Moab and it was too late to change my meal plan for the next few days. With no other good options, I sucked it up, tossed a loaf into my cart, and paid my tab with a scowl. 

And I also said to myself, “never again.”

I’ve always loved freshly baked bread, and I’d already been dabbling at the time with a basic no-knead recipe my wife had found online. But even though we had plenty of yeast on hand at the house, a national shortage had prompted a widespread sourdough boom so I figured I may as well hop on the bandwagon. Plus, a toasted slice of fresh sourdough with a schmear of good butter? Divine.

A friend of mine gave me some of her starter – which I promptly killed. She gave me another dollop that I tended to much more carefully. That Christmas, my wife gave me the Ken Forkish book, Flour Water Salt Yeast, and that was all she wrote. I learned about hydration ratios and autolysing and gluten development and coil folds. I bought bannetons and a bread cloche and heavy commercial-grade steel loaf pans. I repurposed the digital scale I used in the garage for measuring ingredients, and we even upgraded our KitchenAid stand mixer to a bigger one with more capacity. Most recently, I’ve been researching different kinds of bread lames so I can step up my scoring game.