I’ve been baking sourdough bread for a few years now. One of the first bread-specific tools I invested in for my new hobby was a couple of banneton proofing baskets to give my breads a professional look and shape. Then I got a digital scale to start weighing out my ingredients precisely. But, maybe you don’t have any special bread baking tools, and you still want to make a loaf of sourdough. Is it possible to bake sourdough bread without special tools? Yes, it is.
Here are my five tips for how to make sourdough bread without any special tools:
- Use Cups and Tablespoons Instead of a Digital Scale
- Use a Knife to Divide Your Dough Instead of a Bench Scraper
- Use a Bowl or Loaf Pan Instead of a Banneton Basket
- Bake on a Pizza Stone or Baking Sheet Instead of a Dutch Oven
- Score with a Serrated Knife Instead of a Bread Lame
In this article, I’ll explain why all of these tips work and can get you the beautiful, homemade sourdough bread that you’re looking for.
For the first tip, let’s talk about a myth that surrounds sourdough baking: the myth that you need a digital scale to make good sourdough.
1. Use Cups and Tablespoons Instead of a Digital Scale
When you dive into the world of sourdough bread, one of the first things you will hear is that you need to buy a digital scale. Especially in the United States, where baking with volumetric measurements is still the norm, you might wonder if you really need a digital scale to make sourdough bread.
As a general rule, you do not need a digital scale to bake sourdough bread. Weighing your ingredients down to the exact gram is very precise, and it will help you achieve a consistent product each time you bake. But, it is possible to make great sourdough bread without a scale. You can measure the ingredients with cups and tablespoons instead.
Making Sourdough Bread without a Digital Scale
To get started making sourdough bread without a digital scale, you’ll need to find a good sourdough recipe that lists the ingredients in cups and tablespoons. This will work WAY better than trying to convert a metric recipe into cups and tablespoons.
Check out my recipe at the bottom of this article. It outlines how to make my standard sourdough bread, but with cups and tablespoons instead of grams.
At the end of the day, I do recommend investing in a decent scale, especially if you plan on doing a lot of baking. Weighing your ingredients down to the gram gets you amazing consistency that you just can’t get with cups and tablespoons. This is the very affordable scale that I use from Amazon. However, is a scale absolutely necessary for sourdough? No. Plenty of people have made sourdough bread without weighing their ingredients, and you can too.
If you’re interested in investing in some quality, but affordable, baking tools, here are some of my favorites:
Some of My Favorite Baking Tools (Affiliate Links):
Baker of Seville Bread Lame
Oval Banneton Basket
Non-Stick Bread Pan
Non-Stick Focaccia Pan
2. Use a Knife to Divide Your Dough Instead of a Bench Scraper
Once your dough has gone through its first rise, that is usually when you divide your dough into loaves, and shape the individual loaves into whatever you want them to be. A good bench scraper is your friend here. Bench scrapers are purpose-built tools that allow you to divide and shape dough without harming your kitchen counter. But, do you actually need a bench scraper for bread making?
You do not need a bench scraper for bread making. If you don’t have a bench scraper, you can use a chef’s knife to divide your dough and your hands to shape the dough. After the dough’s first rise, cut the dough carefully with a clean chef’s knife to divide it, and then shape each piece of dough with your hands.
Bench scrapers definitely have their benefits. For example, I love how well my favorite non-stick bench scraper cleans up the counter after I’m done baking. See the video I made on bench scrapers here. But, at the end of the day, they’re not absolutely necessary for making sourdough bread. You really only need a knife and your own two hands.
3. Use a Bowl or a Loaf Pan Instead of a Banneton Basket
The trendy thing in the world of sourdough bread is using banneton baskets, or proofing baskets, for proofing your bread. These baskets are designed to support the shape of wet doughs as they rise, but they also give breads a unique design on the outside that makes them look like they came from a professional bakery!
But, what can you use if you don’t have a banneton basket?
As a general rule, you can use a mixing bowl lined with a kitchen towel instead of a banneton basket. This will provide the same support to your dough that a round banneton basket would. As long as you generously dust the kitchen towel with flour before adding the dough, your dough shouldn’t stick at all.
Whenever I haven’t had enough banneton baskets in the house, I’ve always just used random mixing bowls lined with kitchen towels. This has worked every time.
But don’t forget about the humble loaf pan! I’ve been baking a lot of sourdough breads in loaf pans lately for sandwiches, and they’ve been coming out great. Check out my article here about loaf pan sourdough bread. With this method you don’t need to use a banneton basket at all because the dough proofs right inside of the pan that you’re going to bake it in.
Okay. Let’s assume that you want to bake an artisan, free-form loaf of sourdough bread – not in a loaf pan. Doesn’t that require a Dutch oven?
4. Bake on a Pizza Stone or Sheet Pan Instead of a Dutch Oven
Dutch ovens are all the rage in the world of homemade sourdough bread, and for good reason! Dutch ovens provide a hot baking surface to bake on and they trap in steam from the dough, which gives your bread a bakery-quality crust. But, what can you use instead of a Dutch oven for sourdough bread?
If you don’t have a Dutch oven for baking sourdough bread, you can always bake the bread directly on a pizza stone or a parchment-lined sheet pan instead. You’ll just need to make sure you add some steam to your oven to produce the same results that a Dutch oven would. Adding a few ice cubes to the oven as you start baking usually provides sufficient steam for one loaf of bread.
If you have a pizza stone or pizza steel, follow my guide in the video above to see how to bake sourdough without a Dutch oven. But, if you don’t have a pizza stone either, no worries! Just line a metal sheet pan with parchment paper and use that as your baking surface. It’s better not to preheat the sheet pan if you’re using this method, since sheet pans don’t hold heat very well anyway.
Now, how are you going to score the dough right before you bake it? Don’t you need a razor blade for that?
5. Score with a Serrated Knife Instead of a Bread Lame
Razor blades, frequently called bread lames, are what most bakers use to score the tops of their sourdough breads. But what can you use instead of a bread lame?
If you don’t have a razor blade or a bread lame, you can score your sourdough bread with a serrated bread knife. A sharp serrated knife is the best common kitchen tool for scoring bread because you can easily score quick, shallow cuts into the dough without the knife dragging and pulling on the dough, like other knives have the tendency to do.
If you don’t have a serrated knife, you can also score your sourdough bread with other things, like scissors, or a clean utility knife. I wrote a whole article about different ways to score bread without a razor blade. Check out that article if you want to learn more.
Assuming you’ve shaped your sourdough bread as a round ball (or boule), which you probably have done if you’re proofing it in a towel-lined bowl, this is how I recommend scoring it:
Score the dough with two quick, confident slashes in a cross shape (+) on top of the loaf. The scores should go about 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep. These score lines will open up beautifully in the oven, giving your loaf a classic but rustic appearance.
Related Questions: Baking Sourdough Bread Without Special Tools
Do I need a special pan to bake sourdough bread?
As a general rule, you do not need a special pan to bake sourdough bread. You can bake sourdough in a standard metal or glass loaf pan. You can also bake a free-form sourdough loaf (without a pan) directly on a pizza stone or in a Dutch oven. There are also specialty pans like the Challenger Bread Pan that many bakers love to use.
Now, here’s a recipe you can follow to bake sourdough bread without any special tools. Enjoy!
Sourdough Bread Recipe (No Special Equipment)
Here's how you make a beautiful, artisan loaf of sourdough bread, without any special tools or fancy equipment required!
Ingredients
- Bread Flour - 4 cups
- Water - 1 1/2 cups
- Salt - 1 1/2 tsp
- Sourdough Starter - 1/2 cup (stirred down)
Instructions
- Feeding your starter: The night before you plan to make bread, feed your starter enough so that you'll have 100 grams of starter ready to use the next day. I usually take about 25 grams of leftover sourdough starter out of the fridge and feed it 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. Stir that mixture together, mark the top with a rubber band, and wait 4-8 hours (or overnight) until the starter has doubled in size.
- Mixing your dough: Mix all of the dough ingredients together in a mixing bowl and stir them thoroughly to combine with a spoon. You can use your hands instead of a spoon if you want to. Stir until no dry bits of flour remain, cover the bowl of dough up with a kitchen towel, and let it rest for 30 minutes.
- Kneading and Bulk Fermentation: Now is the time to build up strength in the dough. After the 30 minute rest, uncover the dough and knead it with your hands for about 8-10 minutes until the dough is smooth and holds together well. Then cover the dough up in a bowl and let it rest for 4-8 hours at room temperature, until it roughly doubles in size. Note: If you don't want to do traditional "kneading," you can give the dough three sets of "stretch and folds" with a 30 minute rest in between each. After the last set of stretch and folds, cover the dough and wait for it to double in size, just like with the kneading method.
- Shaping: When the dough is done rising, take it out of the bowl and shape it with your hands into a tight ball. Cover it up with a towel and let it rest for 30 more minutes. Thirty minutes later, uncover the dough, sprinkle the top with flour, and shape it into a tight ball again. Then, line a small mixing bowl with a kitchen towel and dust the towel generously with flour. Transfer the ball of dough into the mixing bowl upside down, with the sticky side up and the floured side down.
- Proofing: Cover up the dough with the kitchen towel and let it proof at room temperature for 2-3 hours. Or, move the dough to the fridge and let it proof overnight in the cold environment.
- Preheating: Preheat your oven to 500°F (260°C) for at least 30 minutes before you're ready to bake. Place a metal cake pan in the bottom rack of the oven to be used as a steam tray.
- Scoring: When the oven is preheated, transfer your dough, smooth side up and seam side down, onto a baking sheet that has been lined with parchment paper. (If you don't have parchment paper you can dust the pan with cornmeal.) Then cut the dough across the top of the loaf in a cross (+) pattern with a serrated knife.
- Baking: Place the baking tray into the oven and bake the bread initially for 20 minutes. Slide a handful of ice cubes into the steam tray to provide steam during the first 20 minutes of baking. Twenty minutes later, remove the steam tray from the oven and continue baking for an additional 15 or 20 minutes, until the bread is as dark as you want it to be.
- Cooling: Move the bread to a wire rack to cool for at least an hour before slicing.
Conclusion: How to Bake Sourdough Bread Without Special Tools
As you can see, baking sourdough bread does not require the use of special tools. Tools can make our lives a lot easier, and that’s the same with baking. But, at the end of the day, bread is just bread. People have been making it for thousands of years with a variety of methods. With whatever you have in your kitchen right now, you can probably bake a great loaf of sourdough bread.
If you’re interested in making your own sourdough starter from scratch, check out my free Sourdough Starter Guide. I’ll walk you through, step-by-step, what you need to do in order to have your own sourdough starter in just six days.