Top 10 Sourdough Bread Baking Tools You Need

It’s a good thing that you’re reading through this list of sourdough bread baking tools before you actually started baking, because there is a little bit of preparation on the equipment side before you begin.

You don’t want to be standing in the middle of your kitchen, looking for a Benetton basket that you DO NOT own, while your dough sinks and softens.

With sourdough, planning is key.

Alright to start baking sourdough bread, you must first and foremost have the necessary ingredients, and these are:

• High protein bread flour
• Spelt/Rye Flour
• Salt
• Water
• Sourdough Starter (Link to purchase if you don’t have an active starter)

Also, you MUST have an oven, there’s no baking anything without an oven. Alright, now that that’s cleared, we can get to the rest of the equipment you’ll need to compile before your bake.  

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #1: Measuring Scale

You will need is because sourdough recipes are quite precise, so as a beginner baker, having a measuring scale is very helpful in keeping, at least the ingredient proportions, a constant factor.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #2: Mixer

A lot of people overlook the mixing process. It sounds simple enough, just dump in your ingredients and mix them, but you must take care to completely integrate all dry and wet ingredients or else the dry bits will find their way into your final loaf (not pleasant). If you do not have a mixer, a big mixing bowl and a big spoon would do the trick, but make sure you integrate all ingredients uniformly.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #3: Shower Cap

You’ll need this to cover your mixing bowl after mixing so that your dough doesn’t dry out. Else shaping will not be a pleasant experience. Imagine bits of wet and dry dough, and you’re trying to control it. Double whammy ><

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #4: Bread Scraper

This is used during the shaping process. They come in many shapes and sizes and are very helpful in assisting you in shaping your dough into its final shape. This is a pretty nifty tool to have when baking sourdough bread. It will be good to get one.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #5: Benneton basket

When you’re done shaping your dough and you want to leave it for its final proof, it’ll be good to have a Benneton basket with its linen cover standing by. Will be easy to dump in your dough after shaping to leave it to proof. Remember to flour your basket generously with rice flour before you dump your dough in, else it will stick to the linen cloth.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #6: Bread Lame

For the scoring part of the process, you will need to prepare a lame. This will help you to cut the bread so that air can escape easily through it during the baking process. Or else, the bread will burst out in unexpected places. It won’t impact the taste of the loaf, but it won’t look as nice. Better to control how the air moves than leave it to chance.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #7: Baking Paper

During the baking process, you will need baking paper to place your dough on before you bake it. You can get either the reusable nylon one, or the waxed parchment paper.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #8: Baking Pan

You will also need a baking pan to lay your bread atop your parchment paper, before you slide the entire thing into your hot oven.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #9: Oven gloves

Please do not forget to prepare your gloves. You do not want to put your bread into the oven bare handed. We like our fingerprints still intact after our sourdough bread bake.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #10: Dutch Oven/Spray Bottle

If you’re not baking with a Dutch oven, you will need a spray bottle to generate steam so that the bread doesn’t harden too quick and not be able to rise further. The more steam, the slower the crust hardens, the more oven spring you’ll hopefully have.

Sourdough Bread Baking Tools #Bonus: Bread Knife

When your loaf is baked and ready to be eaten, a bread knife would really help in slicing it apart. If you use a regular knife, be super careful, it’s easy for the blade to slip and inadvertently cut your fingers. (speaking from a lot of experience)

Stuff that didn’t make the list, but may be helpful:

• Rice flour
• Sieve

Alright so that’s a whole list of everything you will need to prepare before starting to bake your sourdough bread. If any of these equipment is difficult to purchase or too expensive, we actually made another article highlighting the cheap and accessible equipment that you can buy to get started making sourdough bread.

Also if you want a step by step breakdown of the entire process of baking sourdough bread, here’s the link to learn how to make your very own sourdough bread.

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See you in our next article! Thanks for reading, and happy baking!