Friday 10 September 2010

Making sourdough: what equipment do you need?

As has been mentioned before, I like gadgets, I like buying new kit. But there are some things that are more important than others. Making sourdough bread should be about connecting you to an easier, but also harder, time. When things were simpler, but more effort went into them. I promise you that once you start making and eating sourdough on a regular basis, your life changes in little ways.

Yeh, yeh, whateva. But until that happens: shopping.

What to keep your sourdough starter in?

You need to be a bit careful about what you keep it in. A clean glass jar will do, but it has to have room for the starter to grow. If you refresh it to capacity, there's a very real possibility that your starter could explode the jar as it ferments. I use a Kilner jar. You can use a large jam jar. You can keep your starter in plastic of course, but yuk.

My starter in its Kilner jar, aka the mothership


Okay what other bits do I need?

Disappointingly little, really. If you want a past-time that involves spending loads of money on kit, you need to take up fishing or golf. Things that I use and think are really useful are:

Large stainless steel bowls that I bought in Ikea once. Actually that's a lie, I inherited them from my boyfriend when we moved in together. But you can buy stainless steel bowls anywhere. Don't spend loads and bigger rather than smaller but not so big you could spin yourself round in them. But don't sweat it if you don't have the, any big old bowls would do.

A dough scraper: absolutely worth buying if you don't have one. When the dough is really frisky, there are times it's hard to handle and I knead it using just the dough scraper, moving the dough around as I go. Without wishing to start sounding like an ad for it, ours is from Ikea. It's stainless steel and I also inherited it when my boyfriend/partner blah de blah moved in together. See "living with a boy" as Monica from Friends once put it, has it uses. I recommend using a stiff (rather than those super flexi ones) dough scraper, insofar as I'm experienced enough to recommend anything bready. They make it easier to handle the dough and easier to scrap up bits of dough that have dried on any surface you've been working on.

Bannetons or proving baskets - covered in full here. You can make sourdough without them, but they make life so much easier and sweeter.

You also need something to cook the bread on. You'll have baking trays, so use them. I use my Mermaid baking trays which I also use for tons of other stuff: not cheap but I bake a lot and they last years. I love the older Mermaid trays, the anodised aluminum ones rather than the non stick ones. Non stick, I find a bit scary. Again, any old baking tray will do, what's important is to preheat it.


Top Gourmet chopping board with my scraper. 

Top Gourmet chopping boards - I really rate these. As chopping boards but also as surfaces to make your bread on. I have the big size one (40cm by 30cm) and I can move it around the kitchen as I work. You may not work like that and working on your regular kitchen work top may be fine for you, but remember that sourdough is hours in the making, which means it could be taking up that bit of work surface for half the day. I oil my board before each kneading and rest the bread on it (covered with an oiled bowl, so I lift the dough up, oil underneath where it was laying, then knead etc). So any chopping board will do in theory, but these are good: light and therefore easy to move around, hygenic (you can dishwasher them if you want to, bear this in mind when ordering the really big ones) and they store easily as they're so thin. These are the future of chopping boards as far as I'm concerned. Plus they're black so chic in my book.

What you really don't need when you first start out:

You really don't need a peel if you use bannetons, you just flip the bread out onto the tray (always preheat the tray).

You don't need a bread stone. But when you get one, you'll need a peel.

Special dough hand whisks: a fork will do just as well.

You don't need a grignette or lame, just use a bread knife.

You don't need a couche proving cloth until you start making baguettes.

Save all that stuff as incentives to go further into making sourdough and for present material.

8 comments:

  1. Feel exhausted reading this. Algerian baker round the corner makes sourdough every day and Waitrose five minutes walk away sells it. So I won't have to chip my Paradoxal.

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  2. Linda, am flattered you've even read this..I never made sourdough when I lived in London. You can buy great bread easily. But it's not cheap. And Waitrose bread really doesn't compare..

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  3. The most important piece of equipment for us is baking parchment.. otherwise we just use a pyrex bowl, a clean tea-towel and a baking tray. Oh yeah, and the Kenwood!

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  4. Dough scrapers; the plastic ones and the metal one like yours are top of the list for sure!

    I have a little black board think it's the same, might get a bigger one now after reading this. Good idea! Thanks. Though I have far too much bread related bits and bobs here already. (blushes)

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  5. Thanks Annalisa. I am so excited at making some nice bread. DH and I were talking today about our everything now way of life and how making bread brings an inner calm, the waiting and then getting something yummy at the end is so rewarding, much more so than popping to the supermarket or even bakers.
    Hopefully we will achieve a slower way of life here in sunny lincolnshire.

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  6. Hi Annalisa, are you going to have a go at panettone? This is the one I did by hand last year, the memory of which finally swung me, after many years to getting a Kenwood this year. I almost cried trying to incorporate the eggs into the dough by hand last year... anyway here is a link to the post - it's a good read and uses a lieveto naturo - I never realised that panettone were made with sourdough before I read this x Jo http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/12/07/panettone/

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  7. I forgot about your link Joanna. I am going to try making panettone yes. Was too daunted last year but will this Christmas. Am gearing myself up for Colomba at Easter. Got any good recipes? I see Patrick has one up on BB but wonder if you know of a better one? A x

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  8. Around high school when I was going crazy with bread baking, I made real homemade pizzas and experimented with lots of different ingredientsPizza Equipment

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