Equipment

Every record here carries a mandatory “what works instead” section, and that is a deliberate constraint on the one part of the site that will eventually carry commercial recommendations. The alternative has to be stated before anything can be recommended.

• Fan oven

  An oven circulating hot air with a fan, giving faster and more even heat transfer than a static oven at the same setting.

  Ovens and heat sources

• Digital scale

  The single piece of equipment that most improves consistency, because baking is a ratio problem and volume measures are unreliable.

  Measuring

• Digital thermometer

  An instant-read probe, useful less for testing doneness than for controlling dough temperature — which is the real fermentation lever.

  Measuring

• Baking stone or steel

  A preheated mass in the oven that supplies rapid conductive heat to the base of a bake, which oven air alone cannot.

  Baking surfaces

• Stand mixer

  A motorised mixer that removes the labour from kneading and creaming, and introduces the possibility of over-mixing.

  Mixing

• Banneton

  A basket that supports a shaped dough during its final proof, holding the form a slack dough would otherwise lose.

  Proving

• Dutch oven

  A heavy lidded pot that traps a loaf’s own steam — it solves the hardest problem in domestic bread baking, and almost anything with a lid solves it too.

  Bakeware

• Cake tin

  The container decides the geometry of the bake, and its material and colour decide how fast heat reaches the batter.

  Bakeware