The Quickest Way to Improve Your Bread

Welcome to Use Your Loaf, a series where we learn together how to make fantastic bread. The last instalment was all about our control loaf recipe – a basic bread loaf that we can develop and improve on with different techniques each time. This week we’re going to use the quickest and easiest method to improve our loaves, without changing the recipe at all. It’s time for some equipment!

Equipment

Here is the equipment I find improves my bread tenfold.

Mini Scales

This little guy gets used almost every time I bake. It measures the teeny tiny amounts that just won’t register on my normal kitchen scales. This makes it perfect for us when weighing out salt and yeast, where often an odd gram can make a difference.

Bench Scraper

One of my most used kitchen equipment ever. I love this thing. It makes handling dough a lot easier, helps with shaping, is great for dividing dough or pastry, and is a handy little tool for cleaning up. Honestly, this won’t make a big difference to your bread, but it will make life a lot easier when handling dough. I picked up some pretty cheaply from Sostrene Grene a while back.

Proofing Basket

Perhaps you’ve seen the proofing baskets full of plump dough at a bakery, or seen the millions of posts featuring them on Instagram, either way, these (wicker, cane, or rattan) baskets are almost ubiquitous in bread making.

Aside from looking pretty, they do a really great job of adding structure to our loaves, especially during longer fermentation periods. They aid the shape loaf’s rise during the second proof and help give the dough some structure. They are widely available and come in different sizes, some with a cloth inside.

Proofing Basket Hack

Sometimes, the best tools are what we have in our kitchen cupboards. Although having the proper equipment is nice, you can get the same effect with an everyday colander or strainer. Place a clean tea towel inside, and generously dust with flour to avoid anything sticking.

Lame

Pronounced “lam-ey”, this is what professional bakers use to score their bread. It is a razor blade on a handle and is slightly curved so it doesn’t drag through the bread. This is generally used in a straight motion to create an “ear” – where a straight cut has been made and one side curls up, typical on artisanal bread.

We can use a lame in the same way we used the kitchen scissors in the control recipe, to release the steam, so the bread expands in a controlled way. However, one glance at the #breadscoring on Instagram and you will find a whole world of exciting to discover.

Lame Hack

As we’ve seen in the control recipe, the lame can be replaced quite easily with regular kitchen scissors. What works even better is the sharpest tip of a paring knife.

Dutch Oven

OK, if you are going to invest in anything from this list, I’d argue that a Dutch oven would give you the biggest improvement on your loaves. When we looked at the different stages of bread making, we touched upon how bread needs steam during the initial stages of baking to give it an extra boost. This isn’t so easy to achieve in our home ovens, but a dutch oven helps us get that little bit closer.

The cast-iron or enamel pot has a big sturdy lid that helps trap steam and mimic those bakery ovens. It also helps to develop a nice even loaf and a crispy crust, helping us achieve that artisanal finish. When using a dutch oven, we have to adapt the cooking times from our control loaf slightly, but I’ll detail that below.

Jump to Recipe

Dutch Oven Hacks

This isn’t as easy as the other items on this list to mimic. I’ve had good results by liberally spraying water in the oven (never at the top) as I put the bread in the hot oven, but it’s a little risky. This post at Life of Strawberry has a lot of different options to try.

So how does all the equipment affect our control loaf? Let’s see!

As you can see, the dough is significantly taller, meaning it had a better oven spring thanks to the steam from the dutch oven. The crumb also seems to be more even, and you can see the outline of the nice ear thanks to the scoring from the lame. All in all, it makes for a bigger and softer loaf.

Recipe changes – We don’t need to change too much in the recipe to accommodate the equipment, all that’s needed is a little adjustment to the baking time and temperature to get the most out of the dutch oven. The recipe is below and the new changes are in bold text.