The Loaf Scout app

Read the crumb, change one thing.

Cut the loaf, take one photo, and find out what the crumb is telling you. Or photograph the starter jar from the side and see whether it is ready to bake. 3 free reads, no account, and the bake log, tools and guide stay free.

Read the crumb

Photograph the cut face of a cooled loaf, straight on, in daylight. A dashed guide frames the slice. In about ten seconds you get:

• A proof call on a five-step scale, from underproofed to overproofed, drawn as a dial, with an honest range and a confidence level.
• A Loaf Score from 0 to 100, set by the same fixed rules every time, so two bakes a month apart compare fairly.
• Openness and evenness, plus oven spring, crust, moisture and bake.
• What the photo shows, each marked possible or likely: a dense bottom, large tunnels, a cavity under the crust, a tight or gummy crumb, a flat or collapsed loaf, uneven crumb, shaping lines, a pale crust, a burnt base, a thick crust, no ear or a strong ear.
• What went right, because every loaf did something right.
• Two or three changes for next bake, most important first, each tied to one lever: bulk, proof, shaping, bake, hydration, starter, cooling or flour.

Cut it warm and it says so before it blames your bake. Whole wheat, rye and spelt loaves are not marked down for a tight crumb.

One clear verdict

Bake it again, Nearly there, One change next bake, or A few changes next bake. The AI says what it sees; fixed baking rules then set the score and the verdict, and those rules can only make the verdict stricter, never kinder.

Read the starter

Photograph the jar from the side at eye level, with a rubber band at the fed level. You get the rise above the band as a percent (doubled reads 100), the activity (quiet, waking, lively, peaked or falling), the bubbles, the surface and any hooch, the hours to the likely peak if it is not ready yet, and a verdict: Ready to bake, Not yet, Past its peak or Start fresh.

Fuzzy mold of any color, or pink or orange streaks, always reads Start fresh: discard the whole jar, wash it in hot, soapy water, and start again. Never scrape it. Throw a jar like that out even if a read missed it.

Your bakes and your starter, on your phone

• A bake log with every loaf's photo, read, notes and recipe in grams: flour, water, salt and starter, the flour type, bulk hours, and a room or cold proof. True hydration counts the starter as half flour and half water.
• A starter page with its name, flour, age and feeding schedule, a feeding log, feed amounts for 1:1:1, 1:2:2, 1:5:5 and 1:10:10 from the amount you keep, the usual peak window for that ratio and room, and one optional reminder when the next feed is due.

Free tools and the full guide

The hydration calculator and the bake planner are built in, free. The Learn tab has 10 short articles, the proof scale and the starter activity scale, crumb and starter glossaries, quick answers to the questions bakers ask most, and plain starter safety rules. The same content powers the free tools on this site.

Free and Pro

Free: 3 photo reads in total, crumb or starter, plus the bake log, the starter page, both tools and everything in Learn, for good. A read that cannot find a loaf or a jar does not use a free read. Loaf Scout Pro: unlimited reads, your Loaf Score trend across bakes, and any two bakes compared side by side. Pro is a yearly subscription with a 7-day free trial for eligible new subscribers, a monthly subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Prices are shown in the app and may vary by country.

Private by design

• No account, no login, no ads.
• Your bakes, photos and starter log stay on your phone.
• Photos are sent to Google Gemini, an AI service, only to be read. They are not stored on our servers.
• Delete everything any time with Delete my data. See the privacy policy.