Slow Dough: Real Bread: Bakers' secrets for making amazing long-rise loaves at home - Chris Young (2016)

Equipment

When you think about it, the things you actually need to make Real Bread are few. The only truly essential bits of kit for making most Real Bread are your hands, a work surface, an oven and something to put the dough in or on for baking. But we don’t wear hair shirts, and this isn’t the Stone Age, so here are some non-essential (but very handy) bits of kit, which are all available from various cooking or baking equipment shops and websites. How many of these you choose to get your mitts on is up to you.

Baking sheets

If you’re not using a baking stone, you’ll need a heavy gauge stainless steel or anodized aluminium baking sheet (and preferably several) for freestanding loaves. The thicker the sheet the better, as thin sheets can buckle with the heat of the oven. At home, you might find it convenient to line it with baking parchment, though in a professional bakery they usually rely on good greasing to ensure the dough comes away easily.

Baking stone

The clue’s in the name - it’s a bit of stone on which to bake. Opinion is divided, but many domestic bakers swear by using one. That’s because it helps to imitate the masonry sole (floor) of a professional oven, which stores up heat then releases it up through the dough during baking to give a hefty oven spring, helping loaves reach their full potential volume. Of course, a baking stone can’t store up and deliver anything like the heat that a thick slab of brick or refractory concrete can, but it’ll be more than you’ll get from a flimsy baking sheet. I suggest you seek out the thickest baking stone you can find, ideally 2.5cm/1in thick or more. Place it on the centre shelf of your oven before you turn it on to heat up for baking.

Blade

Tools that can be used to slash loaves must be very sharp and include straight or scalloped (but not serrated) knives, a baker’s lame (it rhymes with farm: similar to a razor blade) held in a tool called a grignette, or even an actual razor blade. If using the latter, a dirt cheap grignette can be made using one of those wooden stirrers found in coffee shops. Whatever you use, please be sure to keep your fingers safe from deep and painful cuts, when fixing the blade or slashing the dough.

Casserole dish

A cast iron cooking pot or cast aluminium Dutch oven with a lid can be used to approximate the conditions of a professional oven by trapping steam and providing plenty of both bottom and radiated heat to the loaf. Put both pot and lid in the oven when you turn it on, then remove the lid after the first 10-15 minutes of baking, or when specified by a recipe.

Couche

This is a stiff, coarse cloth, usually made from natural fibre such as linen or hemp. Folded into ridges, and dusted with flour, it is used to hold softer doughs (e.g. baguettes) in shape while proving and it is also used to line some types of proving baskets. As with proving baskets, keep them dry, clean and don’t wash them.

Dough scraper

I recommend you buy a flexible, plastic scraper: it’s one of the cheapest and best bread-making purchases you can make. For many bakers, a scraper becomes an extension of the hand. It can be used to mix and divide dough, lift it out of the bowl or off a work surface, and to scrape any scraps or dried bits off bowls, hands and work surfaces when cleaning up.

Loaf tins

Unless you’re going freestanding loaves all the way, invest in a heavy-gauge loaf tin (or “loaf pan”, in the US) or three - one that will hold a 1kg/2lb loaf, and a couple of 500g/1lb ones would be a good place to start. A deep-walled, good quality metal tin will give excellent results and a traditionally shaped loaf. Always use a release agent (see pages 19-20) to ensure loaves don’t stick. Pay particular attention to the corners and the neck (i.e. top part) of the tin.

If your loaf doesn’t come out of the tin easily after baking, leave it for a few minutes and then try again, as steam coming off the loaf can help to release it. If it still sticks, use the straight edge of a plastic dough scraper to release the edges. Don’t be tempted to use a knife as you could puncture your loaf or scratch the sides of the tin.

Mixer

For most people, kneading by hand is part of the fun and therapy of bread making. Still, if you have a powerful mixer, there’s no reason you shouldn’t break out its dough hook - it’ll be particularly handy for high-hydration doughs like focaccia and ciabatta. With a few exceptions who feel that “made by hand” should include mixing and kneading, almost all professional bakers use a dough mixer. A word of warning, many domestic food mixers aren’t suitable for bread making and you risk burning out the motor.

Mixing bowl

You can mix straight on a table or work surface, but a bowl comes in handy. Something like a 3 litre/ 100fl oz/14 cup bowl is a good size for mixing and proving up to 1kg/2lb 4oz of dough.

Oven

All of these recipes assume you’ll be baking in a domestic oven, which hopefully will get up to somewhere approaching 250°C/500°F.

Oven temperatures

All of the recipes in this book were based on metric temperatures with approximate conversions into Fahrenheit and gas marks.

Peel

A baker’s peel is a bit like a flat shovel, usually wooden, used to transfer freestanding dough into the oven. You could use a bit of hardboard/Masonite, or even thick, non-corrugated cardboard - for years I just used the disc that came in a pizza box. Before placing dough onto it, dust it well with semolina, polenta/cornmeal, coarse ground rice or flour.

Proving basket

Known as a banneton in French and brotform in German, as the name suggests this is a basket, usually made of cane or wood pulp (there’s a company in the UK that makes recycled plastic ones), used to hold dough in shape while it’s proving. Without it, slacker dough would spread out. They also have the advantage of being stackable and in some cases making nice patterns on the crust.

An alternative is a bowl lined with well-floured linen, although as this doesn’t allow the dough to “breathe”, condensation can build up and make the floury cloth sticky.

Proving baskets shouldn’t be washed but should be brushed to remove flour and allowed to dry before storage or they can attract mould.

Scales

As noted in the Weighing and Measuring section on page 22, I recommend you use metric measurements for all your baking, and invest in a set of electronic kitchen scales.

Thermometers

If you are really serious about your baking, there are a couple of different sorts of thermometers that will come in handy.

Dough Thermometer

Ideally of the digital probe variety, though that’s a bit of a luxury item for the home baker, this will enable you to check that your loaf has reached 95°C/205°F at the centre. Professional bakers who need absolute accuracy to keep to production schedules also use a thermometer to test the temperature of the water and also the finished but unbaked dough.

Oven Thermometer

Thermostats on domestic ovens tend to be inaccurate, so an oven thermometer is useful to ensure your oven is at the temperature it says it is.

Wire racks

You will usually need to turn a loaf out of its baking tin as soon as it finishes baking and leave it to cool on a rack, or the bottom will “sweat” and go soggy. If you don’t have a wire rack, use something similar that will allow air to circulate under the loaf, like the rack from a grill/broiler pan or a (cool) shelf from the oven, safely raised a little above the level of the work surface underneath it.