I am Maurizio, an author and software engineer turned baker who has been baking sourdough bread for over a decade in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I created The Perfect Loaf in 2013 to share my passion and lessons learned when baking sourdough from home. I grew up in an Italian household, and our lives revolved around good food made by hand. Whether it was the pizza and pasta my dad cooked at his restaurant or the gnocchi and risotto my mom and grandmother prepared at home, I was imbued with an appreciation for homemade food that takes time to prepare—slow food. Long trips to visit relatives in Italy were filled with family meals around the wood-fired oven, mornings wandering the cobblestone streets searching for fresh bread, and focaccia topped with ripe tomatoes packed for a long day at the beach.
He strives for perfection, for the perfect loaf, secretly hoping never to attain it — for where would he go from there?
Jeffrey Hamelman
I developed this sense of value in preparing good food that doesn’t have to be complicated or exquisite, but I don’t think there are any shortcuts.
Sourdough bread is that very definition: it tastes exceptional when the baker takes their time to prepare it and lets the yeasts and bacteria work with the flour and water to create something transcendent.
Here at The Perfect Loaf, I marry my analytical side and entrenched value for good food to share my journey in baking bread with my sourdough starter.
I created The Perfect Loaf to help you become a better baker. It’s continuously evolving because I’m constantly evolving, as is every baker in the kitchen. As I always say, if I’m not baking sourdough, I’m probably thinking about it—always searching for the perfect loaf.
If you have a burning baking question, I usually hang out with many like-minded—and very helpful!—bakers on The Perfect Loaf’s Discord, where you can post questions, comments, and photos. Come join the community and ask a question.
Or, there’s always email, too.
I'm Maurizio Leo, a software engineer, creator of The Perfect Loaf, James Beard Award-winning author, and baker. I live in Albuquerque, NM, with my wife and two sons, where I've honed this bread-making craft for over a decade. I've been labeled "Bob Ross but for bread."
Rebecca Firkser is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, recipe developer, and food stylist. Most of her work consists of translating professional cooking into content that’s digestible—figuratively and literally—to home cooks. You can find her work at Epicurious, Bon Appetit, NYT Cooking, Food52, Serious Eats, Kitchn, and TASTE, among others. She's currently working on her first cookbook, a deep-dive into galettes. Once upon a time, she studied theater design and art history at Smith College, so if you want to talk about Wayne Thiebaud's cakes, she's your girl.
Ashley Meyer is a part-time freelance editor and full-time mom of three who lives with her husband and kids in Dallas, TX. A contributor to The Perfect Loaf since December 2021, Ashley also had the great privilege of collaborating with Maurizio and his publisher on his first cookbook. Previously, Ashley was an in-house editor at Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House, where she helped publish numerous food and cooking titles over a ten-year career.
Eric Pallant is the author of Sourdough Culture: The History of Bread Making from Ancient to Modern Bakers. He is a serious amateur baker, a two-time Fulbright Scholar, a double award-winning professor, and the Christine Scott Nelson Endowed Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability at Allegheny College. He's contributed stories to NPR, CNN, Foreign Policy, the Gresham Lecture Series, London, bread symposia, podcasts, and articles for magazines such as Gastronomica, Sierra, and Science.
Jennifer Latham is the author of ‘Baking Bread with Kids’ from Ten Speed Press and co-author of Bread Book with Chad Robertson. She is the former Director of Bread for Tartine Bakery. She studied philosophy and journalism at UC Santa Cruz before following her love of dough into professional kitchens. She lives, climbs, surfs and hikes in Northern California.
Andrew Janjigian is a writer, recipe developer, and baking instructor from Cambridge, MA. He writes and creates recipes for places like Serious Eats, Epicurious, King Arthur Baking Company, and his own breaducational newsletter, Wordloaf. He’s currently working on his first cookbook, Breaducation, a practical manual of bread baking, which will be published by Ten Speed Press Fall 2025. Say hello at newsletter.wordloaf.org or @wordloaf on social media.
Graison Gill is a baker, miller, and educator. In 2012, he founded Bellegarde Bakery in New Orleans. Consistently recognized as a leader in his field, the James Beard Foundation named him a finalist for the best baker in the country in 2020. Graison's passion and expertise have brought him around the country and worldwide to teach about baking, milling, and foodways. His work has been featured in Food & Wine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Food Network, and British Vogue.
The Perfect Loaf is the leading independent sourdough baking website and was launched in 2013 by home baker Maurizio Leo.
The Perfect Loaf is a two-time Saveur Magazine Blog Award winner, winning both Editors’ and Readers’ Choice Awards in 2016, and a Readers’ Choice Award in 2018. In 2019, The Perfect Loaf was nominated for a Webby Award.
In 2022, Maurizio’s cookbook, The Perfect Loaf: The Craft and Science of Sourdough Breads, Sweets, and More, made the New York Times’ bestseller list.
The Perfect Loaf cookbook won a 2023 James Beard Foundation Book Award in the Bread category and a 2023 IACP Cookbook Award in the Baking category.
The Perfect Loaf has been featured by Food & Wine Magazine, Bon Appétit, Bake From Scratch Magazine, Pastry Arts Magazine, The Kitchn, LCBO Food & Drink Magazine, Craftsmanship Quarterly, Hypebae, and The Manual.
Maurizio and The Perfect Loaf have been interviewed on Taste, Food52’s Hotline Offline and Play Me a Recipe, The Sourdough Podcast, The Kitchen Counter, Slow Food Portland, So This Is My Why, Bread For the People, Creative License, Food Blogger Pro, Creator Science, Rise Up!, and featured as a creator at ConvertKit.
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