What's in "Your Bag"

Steve, over the years I have acquired most of the artisan bread baking "stuff" used by home bakers except for a grain mill, and I enjoy using it all. A good thermometer and a scale are mighty helpful, but probably the only necessity for baking hearth-style loaves, if you don't have a special oven, is either a cast iron dutch oven (or equivalent), or a good pizza stone. I think everything else can be improvised or worked around.

But THE most important thing -- the thing that has made the biggest difference along my bread baking journey -- was, and continues to be, taking hands-on classes. If you're lucky enough to have any within driving distance that are appropriate for your skill level, sign up. If like me you have to travel, you won't regret the time or investment to learn under a great teacher. To see, smell, feel, and handle properly mixed and fermented dough, and to taste the end result. The real-time experience will improve your skills faster than any tool, amount of reading, or watching YouTube.

Steve, in support of Debra's reply, gather expert knowledge somehow. An alternative to a class is a good technical baking book.  I recommend Jeffrey Hamelman's "Bead - A baker's book of techniques and recipes" as it is deep in detail which is what suited me.  Others think it's a bit too detailed for the beginner, but I found it a great resource.

It was great to see Debra's reply as she was the person that demystified sourdough for me over ten years ago! 

In addition to a reliable kitchen scale, I also purchased a pocket scale that can measure small amounts of instant yeast and salt.  

Happy baking, Gavin.

cups, standard American cookbook fare.  Then came no cups or cookbooks and just eyeballing, then came the gram scales.  The scales gave me more freedom and less stress to just experiment as the proportions were easier to get right in the beginning of mixing up the dough.  A spoon scale was the next leap and I still hang onto a 5 ml teaspoon to help get the salt right.  Learning to get salt exactly how I want it, between 1 and 2% of "flour weight" was a major step, it let me explore without worrying about nailing the salt amount, all I needed was the "flour" weight.  This gave me a lot of time to just let the dough teach me about itself.

Learning to read packages is secondary to having a basic recipe stuck in my head, something simple to compare all flours.  That turns out to be an egg pancake, like a crepe, one egg, a few towering forks of flour, pinch of salt and enough milk or water to make a medium batter.  The consistency, the way the flour handles, the way it cooks and tastes all tell me something about the flour and how it most likely will behave later in baking.  It is much easier and less dramatic to flub up a pancake than a whole loaf of bread.  It's also more economic.  

So my essentials are a scale or two, a teaspoon, a tray sized piece of alufoil, a tray sized piece of baking parchment folded, all in a sturdy large zipper bag or two that can double as a fermenting bowl.  That's my travel kitchen "bag."  Hiding somewhere is a sourdough sample and yeast.

Mini

For me, three things have made the biggest difference: 1) classes at SFBI; 2) spending time in great bakeries/with great bakers; and 3) baking A LOT.

Don't have time right now to elaborate (big bake day)...but those are clearly my top 3.