Sourdough Bread Making Equipment

I seldom use a kitchen scale for baking, but when I'm making sourdough bread or feeding and maintaining my starter, I find it absolutely necessary. If you are new to weighing ingredients for recipes, it may seem difficult at first, but once you get used to it, it will become second nature and you'll soon wonder how you ever baked bread without your kitchen food scale.

You will want to have two or three glass jars or containers to store your sourdough starter. 32 oz jars should give you plenty of room for feeding and growing your starter. You do not want to have containers with an airtight seal. If you use the Mason jar lids, just place them on the jar with the rubber strip side up and then loosely attach the ring.

A couple of other options are these 32 oz La Parfait jars. If you use these jars for your starter, just omit the rubber seal. Another favorite jar of mine are these Weck Jars. Again, if you use the Weck jars, just omit the rubber seal.

Like I said, you'll want one jar for your starter, one for your discard and one to transfer your starter to when the existing jar gets a little cruddy.

Although you can simply use a spoon, having a narrow rubber spatula with a sturdy handle is the perfect tool to mix your sourdough starter. It does a great job mixing and scraping the sides of the jar.

Some of the easiest sourdough breads to make are boules. They are some of the very first sourdough breads that you will probably make. You'll want at least a 6 quart Dutch oven.

A banneton basket is actually an optional piece of equipment. It is a wicker basket that is used to proof bread in. The shape of the basket helps to define the shape of your sourdough bread. You can simply use a glass bowl to proof your bread in, but a banneton basket is a great piece of bread baking equipment.

In fact, you can purchase kits on Amazon that include round and oval baskets, as well as a Linen Liner, Dough Scraper, Scoring Lame, Blades & Organic Cotton Bag.

A bread lame is basically a razor blade attached to a handle. Because the razor blade is very sharp, it helps to ensure you get crisp clean cuts in your dough when you are scoring it. You can, however, simply use a sharp knife. A lame is simply a better option.

A bowl scraper is such a handy tool. It helps you to make your sourdough, scrape the bowl and do it all without getting your hands quite so messy.

Just like the bowl scraper, the bench scraper really is a handy and versatile tool. You can use a bench scraper to help shape your bread dough, maneuver the dough, cut the dough and scrape dough off your work surface and hands.

This book by Ken Forkish is one of my favorite sourdough bread recipe books ever. "Whether you’re a total beginner or a serious baker, Flour Water Salt Yeast has a recipe that suits your skill level and time constraints: Start with a straight dough and have fresh bread ready by supper time, or explore pre-ferments with a bread that uses biga or poolish. If you’re ready to take your baking to the next level, follow Forkish’s step-by-step guide to making a levain starter with only flour and water, and be amazed by the delicious complexity of your naturally leavened bread. Pizza lovers can experiment with a variety of doughs and sauces to create the perfect pie using either a pizza stone or a cast-iron skillet."

"The bread at San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery sells out within an hour almost every day. At 5 P.M., these rugged, magnificent loaves are drawn from the oven. The first cut yields steam and room-filling aroma, exposing an open and tender interior underneath the burnished, substantial crust. This distinctive bread was developed by renowned baker Chad Robertson over a decade of working with one of the finest artisan bakers in the United States and France, followed by another decade baking solo in a small wood-fired oven on the coast of Northern California. The following for this singular bread far exceeds the bakery's limited daily production."