Wild Yeast » tools

Parchment Love

Susan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:46:18 +0000

I used to have a love-hate relationship with parchment paper. I love that it keeps all kinds of things (bagels, hamburger rolls, grissini, cinnamon rolls…) from adhering to their pans. In fact, parchment is indispensable if you bake in or on metal pans. But I hate that the rolls of paper parchment are difficult to tear off cleanly, need to be cut with scissors every time to fit the pan, and can’t be reused more than two or three times, if at all.

Since I discovered reusable parchment sheets from Regency Wraps, there’s a whole lot more love going on in my kitchen.

The sheets can be reused hundreds of times, according to the manufacturer. I’ve had mine for a few months and they show no signs of wearing out.
They’re easy to clean with a damp cloth, and a little soap if they’re sticky or greasy.
They are easy to cut to the exact dimensions of your pans. The uncut size is 13 x 17 inches, large enough for a sheet pan, two 8-inch cake pans, or two 9 x 13-inch pans (which are usually a little smaller than that at the bottom). It’s worth having one for each pan you use regularly.
Once they’re cut to size, they can be stored right in their pans.
They can be used in oven temperatures up to 500F. Paper burns at 450.
They are more “nonstick” than paper parchment. I used to need copious amounts of semolina to keep bagels from sticking to the paper. With these sheets I don’t need any.

And here’s even more for you to love: Forget flowers and chocolate — I would love to send some love to your kitchen in time for Valentine’s Day, in the form of two reusable parchment sheets, courtesy of Regency Wraps.

Continue reading for giveaway details…

Tools: Baking Bang for Your Buck

Susan — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 03:31:05 +0000

People often ask me what I recommend as the most important tools to get first, if you have a limited budget for baking equipment. These items are listed in roughly the reverse order in which you could pry them from my hands. It’s also not a bad list of gift ideas for any bread baker in your life.*

Baking stone. It’s hard to get good crusty hearth loaves without one (and here’s why). High-end is the Fibrament, but a less expensive stone, or even unglazed terra cotta tiles, will do the job, although they’re more prone to breakage. $10 – $100.
Steam set-up for your oven. This is not an item you can buy; it’s rigged from inexpensive components. Steam is essential for most crusty breads. Read more about the why and how of steam here. $15 – $25.
Bench scraper (aka bench knife, dough scraper, or dough cutter), like this one. Cuts ciabatta dough into pieces, lifts sticky pieces of dough off the counter, and cleans your counter of tenacious dough bits and loose flour. About $12.
Digital scale. It is my personal mission in life to see that everyone measures their baking ingredients by weight, not volume. More about that here. I like the My Weigh i5000 and the Escali Primo. $25 – $50.
Instant-read thermometer. Dough temperature is important for proper fermentation. Read more about temperature here. A thermometer is also useful if you don’t know whether your loaf is fully baked yet. The Thermapen is wonderfully fast but pricey; this Taylor Digital Thermometer works fine for much less money. $15 – $90.
Small ingredients scale. Ingredients like yeast and salt that are usually called for in amounts of 10 grams or less are best weighed on a scale that has precision to a tenth of a gram. However, these ingredients also measure fairly well by volume, so this is not an essential tool. It’s nice to have, though. $20 – $40.
Stand mixer. Although nice to have, especially for certain doughs like bagels and brioche, most breads can be mixed just fine by hand, so a mixer is a lower priority. Mine is a KitchenAid 6-qt. and I recommend it. About $400.

*Note to my male friends on the appropriateness of these things as gifts to wives/girlfriends: For birthdays and other occasions, it might depend on the woman in question, and on the gift — mixer, probably; scale, perhaps; lava rocks, doubtful — but for anniversaries, just don’t do it! Trust me on this one.

Bag Clips Giveaway

Susan — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:59:43 +0000

I love these things.

Not the flours, grains, and seeds (seen here dragged from their beds so I could assess which ones are fit to make the 6-mile move to my new home next week), although I do love them too. But I’m talking about the colorful bars that clip the bags closed.

If you don’t already know about these little hinged pieces of plastic, your life is about to be changed forever. Okay, maybe they’re not life-changing in the same way as, say, a credit card and Velcro are, but still. Not having to grapple with knots, twist-ties, rubber bands, tape, or springs is huge. I can clip these one-piece guys on and snap them off again with one hand tied behind my back, and when they’re on they stay put.

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Super Peel Giveaway

Susan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:08:57 +0000

This is a loader.

It’s what we use at SFBI to deliver about 20 loaves at a time into the deck oven without harming one strand of gluten on their pretty little heads. This canvas conveyor belt does a great job of ensuring, for example, that our lovely pear-shaped loaves don’t wind up becoming oranges or bananas on their way into the oven.

This is a Super Peel.

It’s what you can use at home to pick up your own pears, pizzas, or pains de campagne and deposit them onto your baking stone equally unscathed. And although it’s modeled after those big conveyor belts, it’s far more versatile. The SFBI loader can’t pick up a rolled-out pie crust from the counter and move it onto the pie dish, or transfer a freshly-ganached cake from wire rack to serving plate, but the Super Peel is great for these tricky jobs.

Check out videos of the Super Peel in action at the Super Peel website.

Thanks to Gary Casper, Super Peel’s inventor, you can have a chance to win a Super Peel (your choice of original maple or gorgeous new butternut) just by being a US resident and leaving a comment here by 11:59 PDT on Friday, October 23. Gary will even upgrade to a gift set — including a cloth storage bag and an extra cloth belt — if the comment I pick at random is super good (as judged by me).

Brotforms Winner

Susan — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:39:10 +0000

I apologize for not announcing the winner of the brotforms earlier. If you haven’t heard from me, you didn’t win, I’m sorry. The only person who has heard from me is Dave R from Boston, MA; congratulations, Dave!

As I said before, I highly recommend Brotform.com for your brotform needs. Good selection, good prices, fast shipping, nice people. So go order some.

Brotform.com Giveaway

Susan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:43:23 +0000

Got brotforms?

These coiled cane proofing baskets turn ordinary loaves into affairs of crusty gorgeousness. You can read more about their use and care here.

I’ve discovered that Brotform.com is a wonderful source for brotforms. Not only do their prices beat all others I’ve found by quite a bit, but my order arrived in record time and I did not feel gouged on the shipping charges. They offer a variety of sizes in round, oval, and oblong shapes.

All of this is, of course, meant to console and inform you in case you are not the lucky winner of the two brotforms — 9″ round and 8.5″ oval — that the very nice people at Brotform.com will send to a randomly-drawn commenter on this post, provided said commenter has a US shipping address.

So go on and comment it up before 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, July 9. Please make it interesting (but hey, no pressure!).

YeastSpotting 6.12.09

Susan — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:01:55 +0000

See this week’s yeast spottings…

My Weigh Scales — Winners and Sources

Susan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:29:53 +0000

I would like to wish happy weighing to Joey D of San Diego, winner of the My Weigh i5000 scale, and Nicole Dula of Dula Notes, winner of the KD-8000.

Next time I’m going to have to ask My Weigh for 247 scales, so everyone can win one. I’m not sure if they’ll go for this, though, so it might be a good idea to just get one. Here are a couple of online sources:

Amazon: i5000, KD-8000

Old Will Knott Scales: i5000, KD-8000

My Weigh Giveaweigh

Susan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:01:03 +0000

I know I’ve said this before (and before and before and before), but I need to weigh in on this again:

If you’re not weighing your ingredients, you should be!

If you don’t know why, go scoot and read my small rant on weighing. (Summary: It’s accurate. It’s fast. It’s neat. Everyone who’s anyone is doing it.) Then come back, because I have something you might want.

For two years my trusty scale has been a My Weigh i5000. I love it because:

it is spot-on accurate
it can weigh in either grams (to 1-gram precision) or pounds and ounces (to 0.5-ounce precision)
it has a capacity of 5 kg
it is slim and lightweight and fits easily in a kitchen drawer (although I leave mine out because I use it daily)

I love my scale so much I thought I’d ask the people at My Weigh if they would give me one that I could give to one of you, and they were nice enough to say yes.

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Fibrament Stone Winner

Susan — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:00:45 +0000

It must be my old age catching up with me; I just realized I forgot to post the winner of the Fibrament Stone giveaway:

Congratulations to Lisa, whose new blog about handcrafted cards is worth checking out: dahlhouse designs.

Even if you do not have a new blog about handcrafted cards, you can still have a stone; order from Fibrament!