This weekend I will be home visiting my family, which means I get to see the bakery in action. My parents own and operate a farm, Northend Farm. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my mum is locally famous for her sourdough bread and cinnamon buns – if you need proof, check out this article.

Now that I’m done hyping up my parents’ business, I’ll get down to it. This weekend I decided to focus on all the tools you need for sourdough baking. No, you do not have to run out and buy tons of things – but if you want to be baking at a high level you will want to acquire some of these things over time.

First we have a bamboo bread basket. These really are key for baking sourdough bread because generally sourdough is not baked in any sort of pan where it will hold the breads shape. So, after your bench rise you would do a final rise in one of these bamboo baskets.

Bamboo bread basket

When it’s time to bake you would spread some cornmeal on top of the bread, and then flip it out on to one of these bread paddles.

Bread paddle

Once the bread is on the bread paddle you would quickly score your bread with a razor.

Razor for scoring bread

With the bread scored it’s into the oven! For this style of baking sourdough bread you would need a baking stone in the oven. That’s why you have the cornmeal on the bread, so you can slide them off the paddle and on to the baking stone in the oven. These are four (only three pictured) tools you need for baking sourdough bread!

If you are interested in checking out some sourdough bread maker creators online, I would highly recommend Jade Lim, (Shebakessourdough on Instagram). Her videos are fun and inspiring, even if you’re not a baker they are great to watch!