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Books - There
are several good books on baking bread and sourdough that I
wanted to provide below. I'd suggest starting out with one
of the traditional bread books like "The Bread Baker's
Apprentice" or "Flour Water Salt Yeast" before moving on to
the sourdough books like "Tartine Bread" or "Artisan
Sourdough." It's important (but not necessarily
mandatory) to understand the process of making bread, gluten
development, water to flour ratios, and other processes
before diving into sourdough directly.
Instant Yeast & Sourdough Starters - For
standard bread baking, Instant yeast (as opposed to Active
yeast) is the only way to go in my opinion. I've had
good luck with SAF-Instant, but other good brands include
Fleischmann's & Red Star. For sourdough I would
suggest you eventually try making your own starter, but that
can take some time to build up enough wild yeast and good
bacteria like lactobacillus, so you may want to buy a
commercial starter to get started while your homemade
starter builds up. When I decided to get into
sourdough bread baking, I wanted to start with a culture
that I knew was solid so I could later compare my homemade
starter with one that was proven. I went with the
Breadtopia starter from Amazon, but I also looked at a
couple others that also get good reviews. You'll also
need a container to keep your starter(s) in. You can
use a quart mason jar (make sure you never tighten the lid
down all the way unless you want it to shatter all over your
fridge), but I prefer to use a swing-top jar that I have
removed the rubber seal on. You NEVER want to
completely enclose your starter since it's always fermenting
and will build up pressure and potentially explode.
Stand Mixers & Mixing Bowls
- While you don't need a
stand mixer for making bread, it's helpful to have around
for standard dough that requires several minutes of
kneading. I've had a KitchenAid Artisan mixer for years, and
I just upgraded to a KitchenAid Professional after seeing a
great deal before the holidays. The downside to the
KitchenAid models is that they're pretty expensive for
someone just getting started in bread making. I've included
links to a couple other mixers as well that get good reviews
on Amazon and on the sourdough FB groups I'm a member of.
For sourdough, I tend to use rustic/no-knead recipes, but
I've been experimenting with using my stand mixer to produce
a bit more gluten up-front. For mixing bowls, I like
metal bowls with a silicone base. They are lightweight, hard
to break, and the silicone helps the bowl not move around on
you.
Proofing Baskets & Bread Pans - A lot of
sourdough recipes have a fairly high water to flour content, so you
can't really form them into loaves/rounds and expect them to
stay put. That's where a proofing basket (also known as banneton) comes in. After the first rise/proof,
you can form your sticky sourdough dough into a rough ball
and place it in a well floured (use rice flour) proofing
basket for a couple hours on the counter, or an even longer
cold proof in the fridge overnight. This way it won't
just flatten out into a pancake and you'll be left with a
baked hockey puck. For standard bread, you can usually
just form them into the desired shape since you typically
knead these doughs more vigorously so they have a tighter
gluten structure. There are some no-kneed bread
recipes that are stickier like the sourdough recipes, so you
can use the baskets on these as well. I also have a
French bread pan at home that I have used quite often over
the years. One thing I figured out though, it does NOT like
the more wet sourdough recipes. When I tried that, the bread
dough ended up filling up the tiny holes in the pan and
basically fused to it while baking. Live and learn I guess.
A standard bread pan is also helpful if you want to try
making enriched (egg & milk) bread, which is lighter and
more airy than traditional artisan or sourdough bread.
Dutch Ovens & Baking Stone/Steel
-
What/how you cook your dough will really depend on what type
of bread you're making. You can make bred on a cookie
sheet, on a pizza stone, in a Dutch oven, or any number of
ways. I started using Dutch ovens when I got into sourdough,
and they're far superior at creating a crusty exterior and
airy interior that so many bakers are after. This can still
be achieved using a pizza stone and tossing a couple ice
cubes in the bottom of your oven, but I prefer the Dutch
oven. I started out with a standard cast iron Dutch
oven, and I've now picked up a couple enamel-coated models,
one that I found used and another I received as a gift.
Both types work great for sourdough or higher hydration
doughs. I also recently purchased a baking steel,
which is a similar concept to the baking stone that has been
around for years. I ended up cracking one of my pizza
stones, probably by trying to get some extra steam in the
oven, so I decided to go the steel route. So far, I've
been very happy with the new pizza steel, and I've made both
pizza and bread on it with very good success. There
also seems to be a new style of baking stone that is more
thermal shock resistant, so that would probably be a good
option if you didn't want to spring for the baking steel.
Other Useful Items -
There are several other useful items to have around when
baking bread & sourdough. Cooling racks, parchment
paper for transferring bread, flour shaker filled with rice
flour for dusting proofing baskets, and storage containers
for bulk flour that I buy from Sam's Club.
Cutting & Storing Bread - It's good to have a sharp serrated
knife when cutting bread, especially the crusty sourdough
loaves. I really like the knife below, and I've been
very happy with it. For storing bread, I usually just
use the large stainless mixing bowl with the lid on top.
Others have talked about using bread bags that can be found
on Amazon, especially if they want to give bread away to
friends and neighbors. I'm planning on picking up some
of those in the near future, but I haven't done so yet.
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