Interviews E06 Parker Cook of Basil & Bloom: Becoming a Better Baker, Building Trust and Learning Sourdough

What's in this episode

Send us a question or voice memo! This week on Saving Bread, Allison talks with Parker Cook, baker, educator and content creator behind Basil & Bloom. Parker has built a large online community teaching sourdough bread baking, fermentation, starter maintenance, whole grains, freshly milled flour and microbakery production. But there is already a lot of information online about how Parker makes bread. This conversation looks more at the person behind that information. Parker shares how he went from learning to cook while living in Italy to working as a research and development chef, and how that analytical background shaped the way he approaches sourdough today. They talk about how Parker actually learns a new technique, why he tests ideas repeatedly and side by side, the importance of building experience through repetition, and why becoming a better baker may be as much about becoming a better observer as it is about collecting more information. Parker and Allison also get into what makes an online educator trustworthy. Parker talks about creating content from real questions within his community, simplifying complicated baking concepts without losing the useful information, and the