Bread baking is not rocket science. The loaves of bread displayed in shops and you regularly eat don’t happen in one snap. In fact, bread baking is one of the most elaborate preparations to pull through, especially if you don’t have enough baking experience. While passion for baking can be a driving force for success, it’s important that you also have the bread-baking essentials to achieve the highest satisfaction.
Thus, if you’re a home cook who plans to bake bread but has little-to-no knowledge of the must-haves in baking, don’t worry because we’ll provide you essential bread baking tools for your kitchen.
Table of Contents
Recipe
Baking is like a battle in the kitchen wherein you must employ a strategy before getting into the fight. Therefore, you must already have the bread recipe you’re planning to prepare and bake so that you won’t be lost along your way—defeat is not an option in baking! And if you still haven’t any recipe, you might want to include the easy yet delicious bread recipes below.
Brioche
If you both love sweet and savory-infused bread, then brioche is perfect for your recipe notebook. Brioche bread is a classic French food that has the consistency of combined bread and pastry. The brioche dough is enriched with milk, butter, and eggs, which provides a buttery and soft bread texture.
Popovers
Looking for a bread recipe that can impress visitors is difficult. But did you know that there’s a recipe that only contains five ingredients that would pop bursting flavors in the palate? Hence, it’s the popovers. This bread has only a few elements: butter, milk, flour, salt, and eggs. Since it’s light and airy, it’s a perfect type of bread to serve if you’re in a heavy-course meal.
Auxiliary Baking Tools
Meanwhile, you must also accompany your recipe with the appropriate and efficient baking tools. These bread-baking essentials allow you to move with ease without faltering in the kitchen. Moreover, since baking isn’t a trial and error cooking method, you must purchase dependable and high-quality tools that give accurate and precise measurement, lessen the time being consumed, and reduce energy exertion. If you already make bread at home and don’t have one, an electric bread slicer is also a great item to have handy!
Kitchen Scale
While you can easily adjust everything in stewing and frying, even if it’s still cooking, baking is totally different. In baking, preparation and measurement of the ingredients are crucial, as it will determine your baked goods’ success. Too much flour stiffens your cookie; too much liquid undercooks your food. Therefore, a portable kitchen scale is perfect for you since it provides accurate measurement than measuring cups and spoons.
Fine-mesh Sieve Strainer and Mixing Bowls and Spatula
Other baking tools that you should have in the kitchen are a fine-mesh sieve strainer and mixing bowls. These three bread-baking essentials are always paired and are useful during preparation. The dry ingredients pass through the sieve that breaks the lumps, and the bowl under will hold the dry mixture. Thereafter, the spatula finishes everything by combining wet and dry ingredients.
Rolling Pin
Most bread needs to be kneaded and rolled out on a flat surface to loosen up the dough and incorporate everything. With that said, having a rolling pin makes your job kneading job a lot easier. All you have to do is roll the rolling pin on the dough until it flattens or reaches the desired thickness.
Clean Kitchen Towels and Cling Wraps
The bread dough needs to rest for 30 minutes for simple bread and 8 hours or more for complex ones after kneading. When you put the dough in the bowl, cover it with a clean kitchen towel or cling wrap to let it rise and prevent insects from sticking in it.
Common Bread Ingredients
Storing the fundamental ingredients of baking makes you efficient since you will no longer have to go to the market. Significantly, it allows you to focus on the baking process. Wondering what these basic baking ingredients are? These are:
Flour
The flour is the primary foundation of dough. The commonly used flour is the all-purpose flour that’s suitable for most baked goods. Meanwhile, if you want to use a healthier substitution of regular flour, you should use whole-wheat flour.
Fat
The fat keeps the moisture in the bread, which prevents it from drying. Among the most-used fat in bread is butter. Not only it gives a buttery taste, but it also makes the bread puff well.
Egg
The eggs act as the adhesive in bread. And it’s an important reminder to use room temperature eggs because it allows the dough to rise properly.
Sweetener
You can use any kind of sweeteners: honey, muscovado, granulated sugar, etc.
Milk
Besides egg, the milk also acts as an adhesive to the dough. It exudes a rich flavor that melts in the mouth.
Non-stick Baking Tools
One of the toughest situations you’ll encounter in baking is when the bread or cake won’t come out from the pan or tray. It would sound very defeating, but gone are the days of baking defeats since non-stick cake pans and trays are now available in the market. It’s a handy tool since the baked good can come out easily.
Oven
The oven is the most significant equipment in baking. This box to rectangular-shaped chambered kitchen appliance produces circulating heat around the chamber that cooks almost everything within its capacity. You can adjust the temperature and set the baking time according to the appropriate cooking time of bread. If the temperature is very high, it will burn the bread quickly. Meanwhile, if the temperature is too low, it wouldn’t rise properly and would have an uneven surface.
Takeaway
Indeed, baking is not rocket science, and to successfully bake the best bread, you must have the bread-baking essentials. Think of it as going into the battlefield, where you must be prepared and harnessed to conquer the field.
Featured Photo by Sergio Arze on Unsplash
