March 10, 2023

Video Transcript: Sourdough Tools of the Trade

The video can be found at https://youtu.be/VYMrbHg-Y9I

hi I’m Tom coming to you Cleveland Ohio thank you for

my video in today’s video we will answer the question that many beginners ask

that is what kind of tools do I need to bake sourdough bread now what you’ll

find is that many of the things that you need are common household items that you already have in your kitchen there are a

few specialized items that you will need so I’ll point out the common items the specialized items and I’ll talk about

some different options that you have along the way now what you’ll see today as I go through the tools that are

required is that I love tools I pretty much have almost everything I

have a workshop full of tools I have a lot of kitchen gadgets so I’ll show you

everything I have but you don’t need all these things and I’ll try to indicate which ones you need and which ones you don’t so let’s get started

so first let’s talk about the tools that are needed for starter maintenance so with your sourdough starter I maintain

mine once a day I leave it on my countertop you also have the option to do refrigerator maintenance where you

keep your starter in the refrigerator and you you feed it once a week it doesn’t really matter you pretty much

need the same set of tools so these are the things that generally you’ll need the first one is a starter container I

used this one tight ball jar with the plastic screw on lid what I recommend

for your container is a straight walled jar if you have a jar with a narrow neck

on it’s very difficult to get in there and stir up your starter and keep it clean so this is a very easy clean

option I also like the screw on lid because you want to keep your starter

slightly open when it’s sitting on your countertop so i screwed on then i back it off one but when it’s in your

refrigerator you want to screw it on tightly so you have the option of both these jars come with the two-part metal

lids I really don’t prefer those they’re just messy to work with you can buy these plastic lids separately and then

with your starter you also want to have your rubber band on here or some people will do this with a marker which is your

indicator of your height after your feeding so that you can see how much your starter has risen after feeding so

that’s your starter these are pretty straightforward the second thing that

you need is a digital scale this is the most important tool that you need for bread baking not just for starter

maintenance but throughout the entire process if you don’t have a digital scale you really need to go buy one

these are relatively inexpensive you can buy a scale at a kitchen store for I think twelve of fourteen dollars the

features that you want to look for in a scale are pretty basic you want to be able to measure thing in grams because

almost all the recipes that you’ll work with are using the metric system and the second feature that I would recommend is

you want one that would be easy to clean when it’s covered with flour because you’re going to get flour everywhere

when you’re baking this one actually is a bad example I had this before I started sourdough baking and this has a

gap between the glass and the scale so you get flat

are inside that gap it’s very difficult to keep clean if I had to buy another one of these one this one bites the dust

I’ll definitely get one that’s a easier to clean that doesn’t have that gap in there so you need a kitchen scale

another thing that I use they have a lot of people you don’t see this is I love these small thermometers this is called

a refrigerator thermometer I think I bought four of these for $12 I keep this with my starter at all times you’ll

notice when you do sourdough baking throughout the entire process you’re constantly measuring the

temperature you should be you should know what the temperature of your starter is you should know what the temperature of your dough is you want to

test the temperature of your proofing chamber if your if your proofing your dough somewhere other than your

countertop you want to know what your refrigerator temperature is if you’re doing an overnight proof in the refrigerator so I actually afford these

little thermometers I use these all the time so I keep one with my starter I’m had stop on my refrigerator so I always

know what the temperature is up there very very handy tool because knowing your temperature is an incredibly

important component of baking sourdough bread and then for mixing up the flour and water if your starter calls for a

blend of flours mine is a 50/50 blend of bread flour and whole wheat flour I find

it useful to do a premix of the flour once a week so what I’ll do is I’ll I’ll

put seven days worth of my bread flour and seven days worth of whole wheat flour in here and then I leave room and

I can shake this up so that I get a perfectly blended mix and then I’m only dealing with this one container every

day when I’m feeding if I had to take out two bags of flour and you’re spilling flour everywhere every time you

open the bag it’s incredibly messy to do that so I recommend doing a premix so this is my premix container highly

recommended and then you need some kind of pitcher to pour your filtered water into your starter with I use this fancy

blue little pitcher because it’s fancy and it’s blue and then the last tool for

starter maintenance almost as important as your digital scale is this little thing which is called a spoon Ola

somebody recommended this and it is the perfect tool for starter maintenance it it’s called a spoon Ola

because I guess its mother as a spoon and its father as a spatula and basically you can use this as a spoon

for spooning your flour into your starter but then it also has this really nice silicone spatula tip so that after

you’ve mixed your starter you can stir it up with the spoon Ola then you can scrape down the insides of your jar

which is very very important because you want to keep your starter jar clean this is really the perfect tool I don’t know who came up with this but it works

perfectly for this purpose so I highly recommend the spoon Ally so that’s my

starter maintenance kit that’s everything you need for your daily maintenance of your starter

now let’s talk about the tools that we need for mixing the dough before we start mixing the first thing that you

need every time you start a bake is you need a recipe I follow the Tartine bread basic country loaf recipe if you’re

using a recipe off of the internet I recommend printing a copy of it so you always have your recipe handy in case

you need to reference that in addition to the recipe I strongly recommend

keeping notes of each one of your bakes so what I’ve done because I do the same recipe very often as I printed out a

worksheet that I created that has a shorthand version of all the steps in the recipe on it it has little boxes in

here where I can fill in all the times temperatures notes so that I can go back at the end of my bake and I can see all

the things that I did so I can learn from what went right and what went wrong so I highly recommend either creating a

cheat sheet or using a Baker’s notebook or something like that but keeping a log

of your bakes it will definitely help you learn more quickly and then obviously any a pencil nearby to take

notes copiously throughout the process okay so now we’re ready to mix the dough

really basic needs for mixing is you need some mixing bowls I prefer to use a

glass bowl and there are a couple features I like about this one is it has a flat flat bottom so it really sits

nicely on my countertop like here’s an example if I use this bowl this

stainless steel bowl and tried to mix in this I mean this thing’s all over this thing is all over the place I can’t I

can’t use that bowl I don’t recommend that you want a bowl that’s gonna sit flat on your countertop in addition I

like to have a flat bottom glass bowl because there are many times where you’re going to be measuring the height

of your dough so it’s nice to be able to pick up your dough and look at it like this and so what the height is

so I recommend the glass bowl but in addition to my main mixing bowl I also

need a pre mixing bowl sometimes so this recipe that I follow calls for 90% bread

flour 10% whole wheat flour I want to blend those together before I put them

in my bowl with the why otherwise you’ll get a big clump of whole wheat flour sitting in the middle

of your bread flour so just having an extra bowl sitting around for pre mixing

is handy in this example if I wanted to premix this flour I use this whisk so a

whisk like this is handy for pre mixing and then the whisk is also very handy

when you do the step of mixing your water with your leaven so I’ll put the

water in this bowl I had the leaven in this bowl and then you have to dissolve the starter into the leaven or into the

water at least in this recipe this kitchen whisk works perfectly for

that where you can really create a frothy mix of your water and your your

starter or your 11 so I strongly recommend the whisk that’s a handy tool you can also buy a dough whisk there’s

something that people typically use it’s a little bit different shaped version of this some people love a dough whisk as

well for mixing the dough I don’t happen to use one of those but that’s a common tool that you’ll see many people

recommend then you need some type of vessel for your water I recommend a

glass the vessel like this this has milliliters marked on one side

of it again it’s glass so if I put things in here I could look through and see what the level is very easily and

most importantly I can microwave this because there are many times in these recipes where you need to bring up your

water to a certain temperature before you add it to the dough so you’re constantly heating your water up in the

microwave so you want to have a glass pitcher I like this one but I can’t

microwave this so you can I just don’t use metal pictures for that purpose

because I can’t put them in the microwave one of the most important things in the mixing process is this and

you’ll say what the heck is this this is my salt bowl you’re like the salt bowl

what is that I never heard of this one of the most common things happens with baking sourdough bread one

of the common mistakes is people forget to add the salt I don’t know why this happens it’s like a mental block but it

happens so frequently a lot of social media groups and on a daily basis you

see people you know saying oh my gosh I forgot the salt now what do I do so as I’m starting to mix my ingredients

I always have my salt bowl first I put this in a very visible place I pre

measure my salt before I do anything and I leave it right in front of my eyes to make sure that I don’t forget the salt

you’ll probably say this guy’s crazy like you’re really gonna like use a

special bowl for salt and then sometime months down the road you’ll actually forget to add the salt to your recipe so

then you can come back to my youtube video add the comments and say you were right I should have used the salt bowl I

didn’t do it and I forgot to add the salt but it’s up to you if you want to do that or not I just know that’s gonna happen a couple other specialized tools

here I talked about the thermometer with the starter maintenance you always want to have a thermometer in addition on

your countertop so you know what your countertop temperature is there are some recipes that call for countertop

proofing or countertop bulk fermentation you’re my room temperature could be 77

degrees in here it could be you know 62 degrees that’s an incredibly wide variation of room temperature so I

always like to have a thermometer sitting right here as I’m baking so I know what my countertop temperature is

and then you also need a digital probe thermometer this is an incredibly important tool and again this is one you

probably want to go by if you don’t have a digital probe thermometer there are all kinds of these bits and thermometers

you can buy expensive inexpensive ones like this you can buy very expensive ones like this they all work pretty well

but you will need this probe thermometer throughout the process you’ll need to

measure your water temperature when the the recipe calls for heating up your water you’ll need to measure your dough

temperature when you’ve mixed up your dough and the recipe says that your dough should be a certain temperature and then particularly during bulk

fermentation I take the temperature of my dough probably 10 or 15 times during

that process it’s very very important to know what your dough temperature is during the bulk fermentation process and

then obviously you need a thermometer when you take your dough out of the oven and you want to test to see if it’s done

so I recommend investing in a good digital probe thermometer this is a tool

that you will use a lot a couple other items here the bowl scraper very

important you can buy you know a four pack of these four six or eight dollars

when you’re mixing the dough and your ball it’s very helpful to have this bowl scraper so that you can scrape the flour

off the side of the bowl this is just a specialized tool very handy for bread baking as the flour is so sticky and it

wants to stick to the bowl you’ll end up using this dough scraper a lot I also

recommend a kitchen timer you can use your watch you could use your phone you

could use your digital personal assistant I just like having an old-fashioned kitchen timer sitting on

the countertop because you’re going to be setting timers throughout the process so you know I used this a dozen times

over the next day or so as I’m baking those are all the items for mixing the

dough

at the end of mixing then we start bulk fermentation and bulk fermentation this

is where you’ve basically mixed the dough and you’re doing some stretching and folding up the dough typically and

you’re watching the dough to rise so you need a vessel where you can really measure an increase in the change in

volume so it’s very hard to do that with a flat bottomed bowl like this if you put your your dough in this bowl and the

recipe says wait until it rises 20 or 30 percent it’s incredibly hard to tell where 20 percent is on this bowl for two

reasons one is the bottom of the bowl is narrower than the top of the bowl so as you’re rising you know your volume and

your height are not equal in a bowl like this and it’s also just hard to tell because there are no markers on this

bowl at all so what people use for bulk fermentation is two types of containers

there’s something like this this is not it this is a different brand but there’s something called a cambro container

which a lot of people use it’s a food storage container it has leader markings on the side it’s

usually a rectangular or cylindrical vessel like this these are perfect this

is the perfect shape container for block fermentation because the height equals

the volume so this is the same size on the bottom as it is on the top so if

you’re measuring the height of the dough and you’re expecting it to rise 50% 50% increase in height is a 50% increase in

volume and it also just required it causes your dough to stand up a little taller so you just see the the percent

rise more easily than you would if you were in a big flat bottomed bowl like this so I recommend a tall narrow vessel

like this for bulk fermentation preferably one that has straight sides on it the other option is something like

this which is taller which is good I can see through the sides of it because it’s glass but it’s an irregular shape where

the bottom is more narrow than the top but this has my leader measures on the

side so I actually use this for my block fermentation so I can tell when I achieve my 30% 40% 50% rise because this

marks leaders on it if you’re using an irregular shaped vessel like this you must have these leader markers on here

because in a vessel like this the change in height is not equal to the change in

volume and when a recipe calls for a doubling in your your dough or 50% rise

in the dough that is measuring the change in volume not the change in height so you have to have something

that measures the change in volume very very important they’re gonna be particular about your measurements for

bulk fermentation lastly when you are

doing bulk fermentation the recipe usually calls for covering your dough as

you’re letting it sit so you can use plastic wrap you could use foil

I recommend that a lot of people use these some people call these shower caps

this is a brute food-grade version of a shower cap it’s called an elastic food

cover you can buy a whole bag of these for a few bucks and these lasts a long time I’ve been using this for months so there’s elastic

food covers very very handy also when your dough goes into the refrigerator if

you’re doing an overnight final proof you can use these covers on there as well so I recommend getting a bag of the

elastic food covers and then there’s always a good old-fashioned you know kitchen towel where some people like to

leave their dough on the counter top and when it says to cover it you just cover it with a kitchen towel I do this sometimes too this is kind of the retro

way to do it I do this I like it have some favorite towels as you can see this

one’s a little ragged I’ve had it for a long time it’s handy to have some of those kitchen towels lying around as

well

move on let’s talk a little bit about proofing chambers this is something related to bulk fermentation and it’s

when you need to increase your dough temperature and get it above your room temperature so a lot of the recipes for

example this recipe calls for your buck fermentation internal dough temperature to be 78 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit that’s

twenty five point five to twenty seven point eight degrees Celsius that’s typically higher than your room

temperature your countertop temperature so you need to figure out a way to bring your ambient temperature up so that you

can bring your dough temperature up the way that people do that is through a proofing chamber the easiest way to do

this is you can buy these things there’s a proofing boxes that you can buy it’s a little pop-up box that is plastic you

can store it in a it folds down you pop it up it has lid on it has walls on it

you turn a thermostat on it and it creates an enclosed chamber with the perfect temperature that’s the easy way

to do it but those things are a little bit expensive they’re a little bit bulky to store so a lot of people try to come

up with improvised proving chambers the most common one is using your oven with

the light turned on if you turn the light bulb on inside your oven that’ll create a nice warm environment very

important to know what the temperature in there is though so you need one of these little thermometers so I’ll turn the oven light on about an hour before I

need it put one of these thermometers in there my oven with the light on will get up between 85 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit

that’s a really perfect temperature for the type of bulk fermentation that I do sometimes in the winter the oven

temperature doesn’t come up very quickly because the house is cold and the light bulb just doesn’t throw off enough heat

so another trick you can use with really any enclosed space just fill up this

pitcher with water put this in your microwave and bring it to a boil and then put this picture of boiling water

into your oven or into your microwave or into a box or into a cabinet into some

enclosed space with your dough and this water if you bring it up to a boil will

bring up the temperature by anywhere from five to ten degrees so it’s a very easy way to do it and then this will

cool down over maybe an hour and a half or two hours you pop it back in them we heat it up again and you can really

control the temperature of an enclosed space just by using a pitcher of boiling

water some other examples that people use for proofing is I have a warming

drawer down here it has a proof setting on it but that’s really more for commercial yeast so even at the lowest

temperature that warming drawer if I put a thermometer in there it gets up to over a hundred degrees which is too warm

for proofing sourdough I could probably figure out a way to do it by leaving the drawer open and let some of that heat

out but I’ve never messed with that because I just use my oven with the light on the other things some people do

is they use their microwave oven with the door ajar similar it’s your your

oven the microwave light will turn on with the door ajar and it’ll create a warm space inside the microwave oven and

again if it’s not warm enough fill up a pitcher with boiling water put that in your microwave you’ve just created a

warm environment some people use seed worming mats you can buy a mat with a

thermostat on it set your dough on top of that some people use reptile warming mats these are the things that go on the

bottom of aquariums if you keep reptiles they’ll bring the temperature of an enclosed space up by about 10 degrees so

you know be creative but always be safe especially if you’re using a lightbulb or some type of heating element make

sure that you’re not creating an environment where you could start a fire but always start with the oven with the

light turned on is usually a good option and vast majority of people do that if it’s not warm enough at a pitcher of

boiling water

so now we’re done with bulk fermentation let’s about the tools that we need for dough shaping so I finished bulk fermentation

I’m ready to dump the dough out onto my countertop you can dump the dough directly onto your countertop this is a

granite countertop some people have wood countertops Formica or whatever it doesn’t really matter you’ve probably

seen I have the silicone mat on my countertop okay I prefer to use this throughout the process for a number of

reasons one when I’m mixing the dough this gives me a nice surface where my bowls don’t slide around on it so when

you’re aggressively mixing stirring whatever it just gives a nice grippy surface the second thing I like about this is that it catches the flour so

when you’re spilling flours it’s going over the side of your bowl it’ll stick to this mat whereas if it gets on my

countertop it just spreads into the entire room so it’s good it’s a good tool as a flower catcher and then the

third most obvious thing is for shaping this has a little grip to it so when you’re shaping your dough there’s a step

in the process where you’re basically dragging the dough towards you to create some friction and seal the bottom of the

dough this creates a really grippy surface some people might prefer a really smooth surface I prefer a little

grippy or surface for that shaping that step of the shaping process it’s totally

your preference if you want to use something like this or not but I really like this because it keeps my kitchen

clean it really keeps all the flour really in one spot okay so we take the

dough out of our vessel that we used for bulk fermentation we dump it onto our

countertop and then you need to flour the dough I like to use this little shaker I just have bread flour in here

this is a typical kitchen shaker that you would use to shake confection or

sugar or something like that I just put bread flour in here and I label it flour so I know it’s in there

and this is really convenient for doing a very light dusting there are some other real specialized tools for doing a

very light dusting of flour that you’ll see some people use but it’s helpful to have something like that the next thing

you’ll need is a bench scraper or sometimes called a bench knife now this

is a little thicker large then my bowl scraper bowl scraper really

isn’t large enough for cutting and shaping the dough although some people might try to use that this bench scraper

is a little bit more effective so this is the tool that you use to cut the dough so when you’re make this double

recipe of the Tartine bread it breaks two loaves so you want to cut that in half this is the tool that you use for

that and then when you’re shaping the dough you’re using this in one hand you’re using your other hand and you’re

basically turning the dough for the shaping you can see all kinds of videos on how to shape your loaves this is the

basic tool that people use this is also helpful just for cleaning up your countertop for scraping up bits of dough

and scraping up flour and things of that nature very very handy tool very inexpensive that’s your bench scraper so

now I’ve shaped my my dough and the next step is to put it into my shaping

baskets now a lot of people who bake sourdough bread use the traditional shaping baskets from France called Banat

ons those are basically a winter style cane style round basket that’s been used

from for you know probably hundreds of years for shaping your lobes I don’t use

Banat ons although I have every other tool imaginal I’ve just never it’s just

not my style I just don’t like that look of the bread so I do makeshift Banat ons which anybody can do

so if you’re making batard you basically want to keep your dough in a rectangular shape I just use this loaf pan I put one

of these flour sack claws in here I’ve covered this with a mix of white rice

flour and white bread flour 50/50 mix and this is my Bannatyne shaper

sometimes I make half sized loaves here’s my mini baton shaper same thing

you just used the mix of rice flour some people use 100% rice flour I do a mix of rice flour bread flour

there’s my small Bannatyne and then similarly if I want to do the standard

size pool where is my bull shaper makeshift

Bannatyne that’s the perfect size and shape looks just like a Bannatyne put

your towel in there and there’s my shaper for my full-size pool I can do half size pools so look around some

people use calendars for this you could really use anything it’s really just to keep the shape of your loaf and if you

have something like this these are called flour sack cloths I get these down in Amish country in Central Ohio

it’s a very kind of tight woven linen I believe very easy to wash very easy to

keep clean you can lighten your Banat ons or makeshift Banta tongs with those

when I’m dusting the the flour sack cloths for my Banat ons

I said I use a mix of 50% rice flour 50% white flour here’s another you know thing I

recommend do a premix instead of bringing your flour bags back out I just do a premix of 5050 I keep it here I

have it labeled clearly what’s in here so I always have my premix ready try to keep your flour bags to a minimum if

you’re always doing the same premix mix up a couple of those premix batches so now I’m ready to put my Benetton’s in

the refrigerator if I’m doing an overnight proof it calls for them to be covered I’m back with my shower cap or

my elastic food cover I cover my bowl with this in the refrigerator or very

handy to have you know I have dozen of these lying around so now I’m done with shaping when I put my loaves into the

refrigerator they always travel with their own thermometer so I I put my cover on this I put it in the refrigerator with the thermometer

there’s a significant difference in temperature in your refrigerator depending on what shelf you put your

your dough on so it’s really important to have a thermometer with it if I put this on the top shelf of my refrigerator

it might be 40 degrees Fahrenheit if I put it on the bottom shelf it might be 36 or 35 degrees Fahrenheit if I put it

in the back of the refrigerator it’s colder than in the front or the refrigerator so your your dough should

always travel with a thermometer in my recomendation so that’s it for shaping

now let’s talk about the tools that we need for baking

so we’ve done an overnight proof were ready to score our lobes let’s talk about the tools required for scoring the

classic tools required for scoring is something called a LOM this is the French word for blade I believe this is

kind of the classic version of a LOM it’s basically a razor blade on the end

of a stick you can buy all kinds of these but they all use the same type of thing it’s basically a double edge razor

blade you can buy a box of those and then some way to hold the blade there are some really creative things out

there I’d suggest look for different versions of these and just find something that you would personally like

based on personal preference this particular version tends to curve the blade a little bit which some people

prefer there are other versions that keep the blade really straight that’s really the main difference between the

Lum you can also use you know common kitchen knife just playing your sharpest

possible knife I have this knife it’s almost like a razor sharp blade I could

use this for scoring my lobes it works almost as effectively as the LOM you can

use a box cutter this is a traditional Olde Tyme box cutter this doesn’t really expose enough of the blade though you’ll

find that this is a little shallow so what some people do is they’ll just take

the blade out of this this is a single edge razor blade so I can put my finger on the backside of it without cutting

myself and that just gives me a really versatile tool for scoring actually

prefer just that single edge razor blade like that some people will grab the

double edge razor blade from their LOM I don’t even want to take that off because I might cut myself I think that’s crazy

I mean people are just holding the edge of a razor blade with your finger that’s

kind of silly and it’s dangerous I don’t recommend that if you want to hold the blade get a single-edged blade I mean it’s doesn’t make any sense to

hold a double-edged blade the way people do I don’t know why they do that if you

work in the medical profession you might have a scalpel that you want to use if you’re into crafts this is a craft knife

that has you know the little craft blade on it some pea we’ll use these I tried this a few times

it was no better than just using the razor blade but some people who are really into crafts might be real

familiar with those those are your options for scoring now as we get ready

for baking the loaves you’ll want to pre-heat your oven and one of the things

I recommend that you do at least once we really should do it occasionally is get

one of these inexpensive oven thermometers and check the calibration of the temperature in your oven so

you’ll be required to pre-heat your oven to 500 degrees put this in there a few

times and test it sometimes your oven temperature thermostats are incorrect you might heat it to 500 the Bell will

go off and your oven temperature will be 450 degrees I mean that it’s not uncommon for some oven thermostats to be

off by 30 40 50 degrees Fahrenheit in one direction or the other the other thing that’s important is if

you’re heating up your Dutch oven preheating it I recommend putting this thermometer inside the Dutch oven a few

times because whether you heat it with the lid on or even with the lid off the inside of the Dutch oven will heat up

much more slowly than the ambient temperature in your oven so your oven will tell you it’s 500 degrees

if you pre-heat your out your Dutch oven with the lid on and I’ve done a test of this the inside of your Dutch oven will

only be 350 degrees Fahrenheit when your oven temperature tells you the oven is at 500 if you take the lid off so you

preheat it with the lid off the inside of the Dutch oven will still be 50 70

500 degrees cooler than the oven temperature even with the lid off which

is really hard to believe but it just takes a while for that real heavy material in the Dutch oven to come up to

temperature so test your oven a couple times just to get familiar with how long you need to preheat it to really bring it up to temperature speaking of dutch

ovens let’s look at what dutch oven i use

so the most common baking vessel that people use and what’s often recommended

is a Dutch oven you can use a cast iron combo cooker you can use a cast iron

Dutch oven just happens to be an enamel covered cast iron Dutch oven just

because this is what I happen to own so I use it and it works really well this is a 6 quart Dutch oven which works

really well for pools and for half size batard so I can actually put my half

size which I mentioned I use in this shaping Bowl shaping vessel I can put a

half sized bits heart in here a full size if it’s hard in a round six quart

Dutch oven is a little tight you’re really gonna have to squeeze that in so

if you’re doing full size bets hards you might want to look at a different vessel some people bake their bread in the oven

on a pizza stone which is perfectly acceptable some people bake it in a

roasting pan with a lid on it there are tons of options for baking vessels in

the oven the main thing and the reason that people who recommend a Dutch oven is for two reasons there are two things

you’re trying to achieve when you’re baking bread one is you want to be able to create and trap steam so commercial

bakeries typically inject steam into their ovens a lot of people don’t have steam injection ovens so you want to

trap steam in there that’s what this heavy lid of the Dutch oven does when you put your bread in here it’s loaded

with liquid you put that lid on and bring it up to 450 or 500 degrees it creates a steam chamber inside your oven

so that’s the first reason people use a cover vessel the second thing that

you’re trying to do with a Dutch oven is you’re trying to replicate the super high heat of a commercial bakery so

commercial bakery oven might be 900 degrees for example Fahrenheit by putting your bread in the Dutch oven

you’re basically creating an oven inside your oven you’re bringing the walls of

the oven much closer to the loaf of bread through these heavy walls of the Dutch

oven so you’re trying to approximate that very hot radiant heat of a

commercial oven at a lower temperature which is the temperature of a typical kitchen oven which might get up to five

hundred degrees Fahrenheit one problem that people have with dutch

ovens is that they will burn your bread on the bottom there is a simple fix for

this if you take a cookie sheet and put this on a rack below the rack that your

Dutch oven is on it creates a buffer between the bottom of your oven especially if you have a heating element

on the bottom of your oven it hits the cookie sheet like this it diverts that hot air around the edges then you have

another rack sitting on top of this so there’s a space between the cookie sheet the next rack and then the bottom of the

Dutch oven so it keeps that super high heat from coming off at the bottom of your oven right against the bottom of

the Dutch oven just by creating a thermal break it’s really what you’re doing with this it works perfectly I was

burning the bottom of my bread all the time I did that one time it fixed it I

mean that’s just it works incredibly well in addition to the big Dutch oven I

also have this mini Dutch oven for making small bowls you don’t really need

different sized dutch ovens for different sized loaves I thought that if I put a small loaf in the big Dutch oven

it would spread out and flatten out so I bought this little mini Dutch oven

they actually don’t spread out if you’re doing good shaping and you have good gluten development your your loaf

shouldn’t really touch the sides of your Dutch oven I learned that after a while but now I have to so I can bake two

loaves at the same time so that’s also not a bad option if you’re baking a lot of loaves when you put your loaves into

your Dutch oven you want to dust the bottoms with rice flour typically or

cornmeal something on the bottom of your loaf and then I strongly recommend using parchment paper to line the bottom of

your Dutch oven so that you can number one keep it from burning and number two it gives you an easier way to

lift the bread out of the Dutch oven but if you just take a rectangular piece of

parchment paper like this and you stuff it in your Dutch oven it presses in on

the bread and it’ll actually miss shape in the bread and if you get these ears hanging over the edge and I put my lid

on then I’m letting seam X exit through that little gap that I’ve created so a

trick that I saw somebody do which I highly recommend is you make a sling and

there are different varieties of how you do this I just I’ll do the simple one where I cut a diamond shape so I just

cut basically a giant diamond shaped sling I put my loaf of bread on it like

this and I lower it down into my Dutch oven and look at that it sits perfectly in the bottom so it doesn’t impede the

shape of the bread and it leaves these two handles on the sides so when I take

this out of the oven and it’s 500 degrees or 450 degrees I can carefully

lift my bread out of the oven on my little sling very common technique that

a lot of people use I highly recommend that then let’s talk about kitchen safety it’s incredibly dangerous baking

sourdough bread you’re working with razor blades very sharp you’re working with 500 degree cast iron which can burn

you in an instant so another thing that you should invest in is a good oven mitt

or a pair of oven mitts this will save you a lot of injury and it’s very important to be safe when you’re in your

kitchen so I like this mitt because the super high heat mitt I can grab 500 or 550 degree Dutch oven with this and I

like the way that the sleeve comes up like this to protect your forearm you’ll hear people joke about bakers tattoos

which are basically burn marks up your forearm so this will protect you from burning

so I also like these silicone gripping

pad holders if you really need a good grip on something these are a little bit more versatile than something like this

these really I can’t even hold this thing I don’t I don’t recommend those but this one is grippy so sometimes when

you really need a firm grip on something and you don’t want to have a mitt on both hands I recommend these but there’s

one thing to note these have a hanging hole in them and for whatever reason 99%

of the time your thumb will find that hole so you’re you’re pulling something

out of the oven you go to grab your 500 degrees Dutch oven and you put your

thumb through that hole you get a 500 degree burn right on your thumb it’s not pretty so just be careful with these

because of that hole some of them don’t have a hole but the vast majority of them do so now we’ve baked the loaves we

take them out of the oven first thing we do take the temperature so our

thermometer is back you’ll use this more than any other tool at least I do so

having a good thermometer is great you want your bread to be 212 210 to 212

degrees Fahrenheit roughly 100 degrees Celsius on the inside to ensure that it’s baked on the inside and then when

you take your lobes out of the oven I like to have a brush like this this is

something I got at the hardware store it’s just a stiff bristle brush and I

use this to brush the rice flour or any white flour off of the side of my low so

that they look pretty and nobody wants to have like a mouthful of raw flour when you bite into your loaf so I like

to get the flour off of my loaf and then lastly once your lobes have sufficiently

cooled you need a great bread knife this one I strongly recommend this is the

mercer culinary 10-inch wavy knife this is a superb bread knife there are all

kinds of great bread knives out there this one is very inexpensive this is less than $20 you can buy you know

really high-end I have for $200 this one does the job I also recommend this sheath for it this was an

extra $3 or something because it protects your blade so I only use this for bread making I don’t use it for

anything else and the other thing I like about this sheath is it makes a great

sound when you take the blade out so I

really like to do that so you’re ready to slice into your loaf you should have

a good cutting board some cutting boards you know I recommend the wood cutting board just because it’s traditional and

I like the look of it this cutting board has you know it’s just wood on both

sides slides all over the place like if I’m trying to cut my bread this this

this thing doesn’t work this cutting board has rubber grippers on the bottom

I recommend something like this just gives you a little bit firmer footing when you’re cutting this is pretty tough

to cut through the crust of your bread and some people will cut themselves because you’re using sharp knives it’s

tough to cut through the crust and your cutting board is moving all over the place so again from a safety perspective

you want a firm base to be cutting your loaves on and if you get something

that’s wood you know it looks nice so now I’ve cut my loaf and people asked the question how should I store my

freshly cut loaf to keep it fresh this really varies depending on what type of bread you’re making what the hydration

percentages of the bread what the humidity of your house is it’s all over the map so I really don’t have kind of a

one-size-fits-all recommendation but the things that a lot of people use techniques they use number one is for at

least a day maybe longer you can just once you cut your loaf you can store the cut side down on your cutting board and

it’ll stay fresh easily for a day without wrapping at putting on a bag or anything like that just put the cut side

down you get at least a day freshness depending on how quickly you eat it if

you plan to keep your bread a little longer you can put it in a brown paper bag just to let it breathe a little bit it keeps the crust crunchy and crusty

but it’ll keep the bread from getting sale that works okay doesn’t last for a long

time some people will wrap it in plastic wrap I find that if you if you put your bread

in an airtight seal it will start to sweat because there’s so much moisture in your sourdough bread even after

baking it you’re real careful about sealing it up tightly in plastic so I

don’t recommend that one thing I do recommend is this other variety of plastic wrap that actually has a

food-safe adhesive on one side so when you cut your loaf you tear off a piece

of this and just stick it on that cut side of the loaf overnight for example and leave the loaf on your countertop and that’ll just keep air from getting

into the crumb that actually works pretty well some people will wrap their loaf in foil

that breathes a little bit more than wrapping it in plastic that works as well and then a technique that I use and

again this is just based on the types of loaves that I make and the humidity in my house at this time of year is on day

one I leave the cut side down on day two I’ll take the cut low and I’ll put it

inside the ziplock bag but I will not seal it I’ll just put it in here and I’ll kind of let the bag partially close

like that but I will leave it open and that actually keeps it incredibly fresh

and it does not allow moisture to build up in here if I seal this bag and come

back the next morning there will be water or condensation inside of this bag you cannot seal hair tight so I leave

the bag open on day two then i’m day three it starts to get a little bit more

stale i’ll seal those about halfway and then on day four I’ll seal it about 3/4

of the way I never made it to day five with the without eating all the bread so I can’t help you with what happens after

that if you want to store your bread in the freezer I recommend slicing it when it’s fresh

putting in a bag sliced and then you can take slices out for toast or sandwiches

or whatever I do that all the time it works really well I just sort in one of those zip locks some people will wrap

their their bread in foil or plastic wrap and put it in the freezer and then take it out and bake it again for ten

minutes that’s an option that works as well lastly the most important tool that you

need is the butter knife for spreading butter on your bread so you can eat the

bread I hope you enjoyed this video thank you for watching

Tom Cucuzza

Video Transcript: Sourdough Tools of the Trade

Video Transcript: Sourdough Tools of the Trade

Video Transcript: Sourdough Tools of the Trade

Tom Cucuzza

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