Gear for baking

If there's only one thing you should buy, this is it. Measuring your flour by dimension (cups or deciliters) will give you different results each time and baking is all about consistency. Also, any recipe maker worth their salt measures their ingredients in grams.

The scale should measure at least down to the gram, but preferably as low as 0.1g which can be common when measuring dry yeast or salt.

What I use: Ooni Digital Scale

I'm too old to knead dough with my hands, and also too lazy. Also making a brioche will make your hands all buttery for days. That's why I always use a stand mixer to do all the hard work for you. They are expensive though ($400 and up), so only buy one if you bake a lot.

Also, if you decide to buy one, buy a good one. There's basically only two brands worth buying when it comes to amateur baking and it's the KitchenAid or the Ankarsrum.

What I use: KitchenAid 5 Quart Bowl

Dough is sticky, especially before you've developed enough gluten strength. A dough scraper is a good way to keep your hands and your dough containers nice and clean. I recommend getting one in plastic to use to get all the dough out of the container. And also a metal one to use for shaping the doughs.

What I use: Bakery Bits dough scraper and tons of other variants. You can never have enough of dough scrapers

After baking a pizza or bread it unfortunately needs to cool for a bit (3-4 minutes for pizza, 30 minutes for bread) before you can devour it. If you immediately put the pizza or bread on a flat surface the bottom can become soggy. To prevent this you can put it on a cooling rack!

As mentioned in my baking pizza in a home guide a baking steel is essential if you want to make great pizzas. Seriously, this is the one thing that'll make the most difference in your pizza baking. It'll set you back a few bucks ($70 -$200) but it's totally worth it.

What I use: Gourmetstål

Many pizza doughs need to cold proof in the fridge for a few hours up to a few days. Having proper containers for this will help your fridge not to become a mess.

What I use: Ooni Stack

Mise en place is le shit, and prepping all your toppings neatly in containers before baking the pizza will make everything so much smoother.

What I use: Various sizes of Patina

When making prep for pizzas, or food in general, I always write a label on the container with what it contains, and when it was prepared. This makes it easier during the bake, especially if you're making a lot of different pizzas. And if there's any leftover ingredients you'll know if they're good or not due to the date.

What I use: Masking tape and a Sharpie

If you don't have a fancy oven that can produce steam you will need a Dutch oven to be able to get a proper rise on your bread. This is because the Dutch oven captures all the steam that the dough evaporates and traps it, thus delaying the crust of the bread to form too quickly, letting the bread rise as much as possible.

I know Le Creuset is the bomb, but don't buy their Dutch oven just for baking, it's way too expensive.

What I use: Lodge Combo Cooker

When making bread you often need to score it. This is because you want to control the rise of the dough so it doesn't explode. Some people use a knife for this, which is not aaaaaanywhere as sharp as it needs to be. Buy a pair of razor blades and thank me later.

What I use: Derby but you can literally buy any razor blade at all