This is an auto-generated transcript of the video: “The Mystery of Bulk Fermentation” from The Sourdough Journey. Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved
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
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