Welcome to Rise!
John Scalo
Updated July 10, 2024
Thank you for trying out Rise, the iOS app that helps you make better bread. In this article we’d like to tell you a little bit about why we made Rise and why we’re so passionate about baking.
Contents
Why an app?
We, like most others, find that baking bread is yes, rewarding, but also challenging and sometimes frustrating. Especially with sourdough, there are 100 things that can go wrong and almost all of them have the same outcome: flat, dense, bread. Improving your bread requires a lot of trial and error, practice, and learning.
As we went through this learning process on our own, we realized that some of the most difficult aspects of the process are planning, following a schedule, managing a starter (if baking sourdough), and using the correct fermentation times.
With Rise, we’ve tried to make the whole process easy and foolproof. The app helps you plan by showing a schedule overview from start to finish, so you know exactly when you’ll perform each step with just a glance. Following the schedule is easy with schedule notifications. We took the guesswork out of fermentation times by calculating the ideal times for you based on temperature and other characteristics of your dough. And for sourdough, there are resources and recipes to help you create and manage your starter.
Secondly, it’s hard to find good recipes on the Internet. And when you do, they insist on telling you their entire life story before getting to the part you need. Rise is a hub for the best bread recipes around, but without all the (ahem) fluff.
Getting started
First thing’s first— you’ll need some kitchen supplies that you might not already have, like a scale, a cooking vessel, and a proofing basket. Head on over to our Gear to Get You Started article for a complete list of essentials.
If your making sourdough bread, you’ll need some sourdough starter. You can get some from a baker friend, walk into a local bakery and ask for some, or order some online (King Arthur, Breadtopia). You can also make sourdough starter yourself. It’s not hard, but will take at least 5 days before it’s ready to go. Check out our Building Your Own Starter guide for help.
With the necessary gear in hand, it’s time to bake! Rise comes with a variety of recipes to choose from in the Recipes tab. If you’re interested in sourdough and this is your first try ever, try our Beginner Sourdough recipe. It guides you through every step of the process for a foolproof baking experience. If this isn’t your first rodeo, choose any recipe that suits your fancy.
As a rule of thumb, sourdough recipes with higher hydrations (75% and above) are more advanced and recipes with lower hydrations are easier for beginners. Each recipe shows the hydration in the Ingredients card.
Once you’ve chosen a recipe, tap the "Add to My Rises" button to add it to your My Rises tab. After switching to My Rises and tapping on the recipe you just imported, you can adjust the yield and total weight, review the schedule from the Overview screen, or adjust the planned start time to fit your needs.
My Rises shows your baking history. All loaves that you’ve made (or plan to make soon) live here.
When you’re actually ready to start baking, tap the "Make Now" button. Rise then begins helping you manage the schedule by highlighting the current step and sending reminder notifications when it’s time to move to the next. If you finish a step early or need to more time, tap the "..." menu at the top right corner of a step card for options. Along the way, you can make notes in the Journal about what went right and what went wrong.
When you’re finished baking your bread, be sure to take some photos. And if you like, you can share your creation with friends by tapping the Sharing button at the top. Anyone with a link to your rise can see it on the web, or import it into their Rise app so they can give it a try.
If you have questions, take a look at our FAQ.
Our recipes
The recipes in Rise are adapted from our favorites from books and the Internet, and fully tested in our kitchens. Each recipe includes pictures, the ingredients formula, videos of the prescribed folding & shaping techniques, alarm timers, and all steps needed to make great bread from start to finish. Unless otherwise noted, our recipes are standardized in the following way:
- Each sourdough recipe makes 1 or 2 large loaves, perfect for fitting into a 10" banneton. If your proofing basket is smaller, or you just want to make a smaller loaf, you can scale the total weight from the ingredients card.
- We usually include a lengthy autolyse process with sourdough recipes. A longer autolyse period, where the flour and the water rest together without starter or salt, builds early strength into the dough and makes it easier to handle later.
- Most recipes include rise time widgets to help you predict the correct fermentation times. Just take the temperature of your dough before each fold and enter the average into the widget. Rise uses the temperature and the dough ingredients to calculate the ideal fermentation time and adjust the schedule accordingly.
If you find that the times are too short or too long, adjust the "Starter Strength" in Settings accordingly.
- Sourdough recipes made over 2 days call for building the starter in the morning about 5-6 hours before mixing. Building the starter in the morning instead of overnight has the advantage that you can monitor the starter until it’s at its absolute peak. Read our Starter Care article for more information on how to get the most of your starter.
- Recipes that call for a single day bake can also be made in 2 days by proofing in the refrigerator. To proof in the fridge, either put the baskets directly into the fridge after moving the dough to the proofing basket, or, if you have a cold kitchen, leave the basket on the counter for 20 minutes before moving into the fridge.
- Most recipes refer to a boule (round) or batard (oblong) shape. However, feel free to use whatever shape you prefer.
Get Rise from the App Store
Requires iPhone or iPad running iOS 16 or later.