Sourdough Baking Toys

Who knew there were such great sourdough baking toys! With any hobby, there’s gear, and when you fall into the sourdough bread rabbit hole, you can get lost for days. I’ve been in it for a few weeks now and I can tell you with complete certainty: there are worse places to get lost. There’s a whole community of foodies in there, people who will share recipes and success and failure and photos and encouragement and suggestions and more photos. One thing I quickly discovered is that this isn’t your grandma’s bread. And there are Toys.

Toys. Gadgets. Kitchen gadgets! Oh my!

The first thing I learned was that those gorgeous patterned crusts on artisan bread require a proofing basket, also called a banneton or brotform. Because the loaves aren’t baked in a loaf pan, but on a sheet (or in a Dutch oven, as discussed yesterday) the shape they are when you put them in the oven is the shape they’ll be when they come out. It seems counter-intuitive to put sticky dough into a wicker basket, but trust me, it works. Rising the dough in a well-floured proofing basket will impress a spiral shape into the top, which after scoring, gives the crust a gorgeous pattern.

So I ordered this one. It came with a little linen “hat” that you can use to cover the rising dough, or as a liner for the basket, if for some strange reason, you don’t want the pretty spiral pattern. It also came with a dough scraper, also called a “bench scraper.” You can get them in metal or plastic and they’re used to scrape dough out of the bowl or banneton, to divide dough, to clean the counter (which is called a bench in Australia and New Zealand, there’s your trivia for the day) or even to convert measurements.

Do you have favourite baking toys? Which gadgets are your absolute must-haves?