Monday Open Thread 1/24/22
Favorite Baking Tools
I’m working on an upcoming post about my favorite baking tools, equipment, and supplies, one of which is the humble metal kidney clay scraper pictured above. Normally used to shape pottery, I inherited a couple of them from past cob oven-building projects. While they aren’t useful for making bread directly, I discovered that they are extremely effective at removing recalcitrant, crusted-on dough from mixing bowls and containers. The thin-gauge metal is flexible enough to conform to the shape of the container closely, and just soft enough that the scraper won’t leave scratches or generate that nails-on-a-chalkboard screech when metal usually meets metal.
For this week’s open thread, why don’t you share some of your favorite and most-used bread and baking tools, obscure or otherwise?
—Andrew
For a less "investment" tool, seconding those that have said a bench scraper. Between being able to measure with it (which I love for laminating) and dividing/shaping dough for loaves, it really elevated my game. I am a new Challenger user and still getting used to it (I wish we had sturdier oven racks...any suggestions there?), but the way it has helped with oven spring is tremendous. I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what I can do with it so far.
Snap-closing mesh ball tea strainer for sprinkling flour on the bench, dough, baskets etc.