Tried heavy curtains and a thick rug, which cut the echo down a lot for me.

Totally feel that, spent a whole weekend swapping caps on a 3B only to find a cracked trace under the board. You chase the ghosts until you finally spot the obvious thing. It's always the last place you look because you stop looking after.

Over an hour just to set up a weekly spread sounds like a part-time job. I tried a fancy layout once and spent more time drawing lines than actually doing work. How did you even stick with that for more than a week?

Our shop tried that once, but the new guy got a little too excited and melted a hole straight through a brand new ladle bottom. We're back to the slow gas preheat now, which is just sad.

Was I wrong to ignore temperature for so long? Reading about @miaprice's basement ferment and seeing my own flat batch proves even a small drop matters. I guess the microbes really do need their comfort zone.