What an amazing and well-written article! This taught me so much about how dough works, and knowledge like that helps so much more than blindly following recipes and being confused when it doesn't go right. I followed a recipe exactly and even by grams but it wasn't rising after several hours, but this article showed the picture of exactly what my dough looked like and it was the "gnarly" dough. Just added some water and it rose beautifully :) I feel like after reading this I don't really even need the recipes anymore, especially because using rye or adding sugar totally changes the water balance, and I like being able to change recipes to my taste (I love the flavor of a bit of rye in my breads). I'll just have to make sure I can feel that slight tackiness. (Which was important, because the first time I added a "little" water it became a mess, which I had to fix with a bit more flour, until it was finally the right texture) Thanks for the incredible information! This article is truly gold, I might as well have taken a culinary class

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