I have a Wegmans grocery store an hour away that has gorgeous loaves of bread for about $6 each, not including fuel for the car. Since that’s the summer option and there’s still snow on the ground, I’m baking bread today. I’ll continue to do so until it’s just too hot, then off to Wegmans I’ll go.
You really don’t need a lot to bake bread besides a bowl and a cooking surface of sorts (a pan, a stone, or a Dutch oven), but if you bake bread often there are items that make bread baking much easier.
The basics
A food scale: Since I usually make sourdough bread for the week, a digital food scale is my primary piece of equipment. When I’m refreshing my starter it helps tremendously instead of eyeballing amounts (30g water, 60g flour, 30g “old” starter). I picked mine up on Amazon for about $15 as these are not carried by stores nearby.
A bench scraper: This does exactly what it sounds like it does. It scrapes your dough off of your working surface (bench) whether it’s your countertop, a marble slab, or cutting board. I’m always using my bench scraper to move my entire dough ball (boule) around during shaping. I use it to clean my work area of flour and dough bits. I sometimes use it to scrape dried mystery bits off of my countertop. Find a good stainless steel one and you’ll never have to replace it.
A dough bucket: I can absolutely get along without a specific bucket in which to let dough rise. Do I want to? No. A dough bucket makes easy work to figure out how much of your dough has risen. My standard sourdough loaf starts out at just under 1 liter of dough. I like to let my dough rise about 60% before it’s transferred to the bench for its first shaping. When I use the bucket, figuring out 60% rise is a simple glance. When it rises in a bowl, it’s a guesstimate that sometimes results in a dough that has had too much time to prove. I got my dough bucket from King Arthur Flour, but they can also be found on Amazon. Get a transparent one with opaque markings so you can check progress just by glancing at it.
A 3.5 quart Dutch oven: I have a Tramontina brand Dutch oven in this size. I love the no-knead bread recipes, but I found that my 6 quart caused the bread to spread out too much. While the “flat bread” is delicious, I want something that resembles a boule– that nicely rounded bakery style loaf. The 3.5 quart is the perfect size for my usual loaf of bread.
A bread knife: Once your bread is baked, you’re going to need something to slice it with! I preserve my bread’s bubbly interior with a long serrated bread knife. My knife is from Cutco since they’re a local knife fabricator. You’re going to want a knife that can cleanly slice all the way through your loaf in one go.
the extras
A silicone bowl scraper: This hand-held flexible semi-circle makes quick work of bringing dough together. I can incorporate every last bit of flour that I measured. It also makes quick work of cleaning your mixing bowl as you scrape your dough into the bucket to rest. I can’t imagine being without it now that I have one.
A banneton: I wanted the concentric circle design imprinted on my loaves, like a “real” bakery style bread. I bought a banneton: a bowl made of spiraled reed-like wood. To achieve the design, you sprinkle rice flour inside the banneton just prior to dropping the dough in for the final rise before baking. If you don’t want the concentric design look, most banneton come with a linen or muslin liner that you can use for the final rise. The liner also doubles as a lid for your dough bucket.
A lame: Did you ever wonder how bakers get the fancy cut in designs on their breads? I did too! Essentially a very sharp razor blade attached to either a stick or a circle of wood, lame means “blade” in French. I used to score my dough with a knife but that sometimes left me with marks that were too shallow, causing my bread to “blow out” just above the bottom crust. I switched to a lame and my breads expand beautifully.
the dream
A backyard wood-fired cob oven. My cousin’s grandmother had one of these in Italy and she baked all of her bread in it. She also made pizza in it which took about one minute flat–imagine how awesome it would be for everyone to make their own personal pizzas! I have a goal of building one in the backyard so I can bake bread in the summer without heating up the whole house, using the remaining heat to have a pizza night. I haven’t seriously researched building one, but it’s on the wish list.
Did I miss anything? Is there anything you can’t live without when it comes to baking bread? Let me know in the comments!
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