Stone Sour Digital

[Zita Lifland]

Whenyou dive into the world of sourdough bread, one of the first things you will hear is that you need to buy a digital scale. Especially in the United States, where baking with volumetric measurements is still the norm, you might wonder if you really need a digital scale to make sourdough bread.

Once your dough has gone through its first rise, that is usually when you divide your dough into loaves, and shape the individual loaves into whatever you want them to be. A good bench scraper is your friend here. Bench scrapers are purpose-built tools that allow you to divide and shape dough without harming your kitchen counter. But, do you actually need a bench scraper for bread making?

The trendy thing in the world of sourdough bread is using banneton baskets, or proofing baskets, for proofing your bread. These baskets are designed to support the shape of wet doughs as they rise, but they also give breads a unique design on the outside that makes them look like they came from a professional bakery!

Dutch ovens are all the rage in the world of homemade sourdough bread, and for good reason! Dutch ovens provide a hot baking surface to bake on and they trap in steam from the dough, which gives your bread a bakery-quality crust. But, what can you use instead of a Dutch oven for sourdough bread?

As a general rule, you do not need a special pan to bake sourdough bread. You can bake sourdough in a standard metal or glass loaf pan. You can also bake a free-form sourdough loaf (without a pan) directly on a pizza stone or in a Dutch oven. There are also specialty pans like the Challenger Bread Pan that many bakers love to use.

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