My Favorite Tools For Baking Sourdough

Intro

Here at Chiliwist & Raw, I’ve been teaching Sourdough For Beginners classes to my community for the past year. I’ve enjoyed every aspect of it and plan to continue expanding my reach to educate and inspire anyone and everyone that I can to bake their own sourdough bread and consume fresh milled whole grain flour.

Some of my students have asked me what my favorite tools of the trade are and so I decided to directly link all of my faves for you guys because I want you to be successful at baking sourdough and, even though you absolutely do not need any of these things to make delicious bread, these tools can definitely make your life easier and make baking more fun.

Read through this list, which I’ve alphabetized for you to make searching easier, and let me know if I’ve missed anything!

My Favorite Sourdough Bread Baking Tools From A-Z

Banneton Baskets – These are the type of silicone banneton baskets that I recommend as they are easy to clean and fold up for easy storage. The kit I’ve linked even include extra tools!

Here’s another option if you’d like to try your hand at a boule and batard!

Bench Scraper – Also known as a bench knife, this is my next favorite tool. If you’ve attended one of my classes, you’ve seen why. I use it throughout the class to divide, shape, transfer dough and even clean my work surface after I’ve finished shaping. Love, love, love this tool.

Bowl – This isn’t the exact bowl we use in our class, but it’s the closest thing I could find!

Bread Lame – To score your bread successfully, this is definitely a tool I wouldn’t skimp out on. These come with very sharp blades to score your bread neatly and efficiently.

Bread Sling – Now, this is not something I demonstrate in my class. I show using parchment paper (which works fantastic!). BUT, with that being said, I’ve used this type of silicone bread sling for the past year personally and I love it. Is it necessary? No. Is it awesome? Yes.

Chopsticks – chopsticks for sourdough?! Yes! These stainless steel chopsticks are perfect for stirring your sourdough starter to make sure everything is fully mixed and incorporated.

Danish Dough Whisk – This is the item that I tell all of my students that I love the most. It is, bar none, my favorite tool for hand mixing my dough. If you’d prefer an all stainless steel option, I have this one as well.

Digital Scale – Having a scale is something that I always recommend to my students because when baking sourdough, consistency with measurements is key.

Proofing Container – If you’ve heard me talk about aiming for that 75% rise during bulk fermentation, you’ve heard me talk about having a labeled Cambro container. This is a very helpful tool and was one of my favorites when I first started out.

Flour – You all know love Bluebird Grain Farm’s Whole Grain Hard White Pasayten flour. This is what we use in all our classes and you can get 10% off with code chiliwist10.

Shower Caps – Another seemingly strange item to use for sourdough, but these are in fact the most handy things when covering your bowl for in between stretch and folds and bulk fermentation.