Author: Andrew Janjigian

Until recently, my understanding of pretzels began and ended with the giant ones sold at sports stadiums or mall food courts. I’ve eaten (and loved) German pretzels here and there at bakeries around the U.S., but I’ve never been to Germany and have honestly never given much thought to how they’re made. So when it came time to create a recipe, I called up my friend Heike Meyer, a German baker who runs Brot Bakehouse School and Kitchen in Vermont, for explanation and advice.

The Different Kinds of German Pretzels

The first thing Heike taught me is that there isn’t one kind of German pretzel, but  several, each one from a different region of Southern Germany, where pretzels originated. Each varies mainly in the way it is shaped and scored  prior to baking. In Swabia, pretzels are known for having very thin criss-crossed arms and a thick "belly,” which is often scored to allow it to expand fully and uniformly, resulting in a range of textures in one bread—crunchy where thin, soft and doughy where thick. Swabian pretzels also tend to have one large "window” below the arms, and two much narrower ones between them. 

Bavarian pretzels are nearly even all around, with three equally-sized windows framed by arms of even diameter. The belly does not get a slash, and the dough should burst randomly while the pretzel bakes. Badisch pretzels from Baden, meanwhile, are a compromise between the two extremes of Swabian and Bavarian pretzels, with a slight taper from the arms to the belly (which, like Swabian pretzels, is scored) and a lower window a tad larger than the upper two. I decided to focus on Bavarian-style pretzels, because they are the ones most familiar to non-Germans—and because they are the most straightforward to make.

A Formula for Chewy, Tender Pretzels

With all the intel that Heike shared, I got down to creating a recipe of my own. My pretzels started out pretty ugly—they were nothing like the glossy, mahogany-brown ones with elegantly criss-crossed arms I saw in my research online or in books, and certainly nothing I’d proudly and willingly share with Heike.

Still, I sought feedback from her with each round of testing, and after a few months, I had pretzels that both Heike and I approved of. Some of this improvement was the result of repeated practice, but my pretzels became noticeably better once I came up with a dough formula that was both easy to work with and gave the pretzels the texture that Heike said they should have: a crisp, almost snappy skin, with a chewy yet tender interior.

Getting the Fat Percentage Right

German pretzels are usually made with little more than bread flour, water, yeast (or a sourdough culture), salt, and fat like butter or lard. (According to Heike, the latter is traditional in Bavaria, though butter is an acceptable choice nowadays.) Some recipes include diastatic malt, an enzyme that promotes yeast activity and browning. (Unlike malt syrup or malt sugar, diastatic malt is not a sugar and does not impart sweetness.) Doughs for German pretzels are typically fairly low-hydration—which refers to how much water the dough contains relative to flour—and makes for a dry, firm dough that is easy to shape and, when baked, has a dense crumb. 

Unlike their softer American counterparts, German pretzels usually contain a modest amount of fat that’s just enough to tenderize them, but not so much that the resulting pretzel would be considered soft. Heike said Bavarian pretzels usually don’t contain more than 3% fat. Pretzels in Germany are extremely quick to stale; they are meant to be eaten on your way home from the bakery and aren’t meant to be kept for more than a few hours. For my own formula, I landed on 5% butter. While not traditional, I liked the way a little extra fat seemed to keep the pretzels soft a while longer.

How to Make Shaping Easier and Improve Flavor at the Same Time

Shaping a pretzel starts with rolling a blob of dough into an evenly-tapered rope that’s about 24 inches long. In order for a pretzel to have the right texture—one that’s both crispy and chewy—the dough needs a fair amount of gluten strength. But that same strength can become a liability when shaping. If the dough is too elastic, it will spring back when you attempt to roll it out. And the more you fight with an elastic dough, the more likely it is going to end up torn, misshapen, or overworked, which would leave the finished pretzels ugly and/or tough.

The ideal dough for pretzels is both elastic and extensible: springy, but with some effort, still able to stretch out a little further. One way to achieve this is with something called a preferment, which also makes for a more flavorful dough. A mixture of flour, water, and yeast, preferments are made ahead of time before the mixing of the final dough. (A sourdough starter is another form of preferment, and works in a similar way.) During the fermentation of a preferment, enzymes break down a portion of the gluten present, weakening it slightly and making the dough it’s incorporated into more easy to manipulate without it seizing up.

Another way to temper elasticity in a dough is to minimize kneading. Gluten forms passively when you mix flour and water together, and often, this is more than enough to give a dough the appropriate structure. (This is how so-called “no-knead" bread recipes work.) To make a German pretzel dough that wouldn’t fight back, I used a preferment and kept kneading to a minimum. For the former, I chose a poolish, which is the French term for a preferment containing equal parts flour and water and is fermented for a few hours at room temperature before it’s moved into the fridge overnight. With the exception of a single hand-kneading after 30 minutes of proofing to help even out the texture of the dough, I decided to eliminate kneading entirely.

Unlike puffier American pretzels, German ones are fairly slender in form. To keep them that way, I learned that it was best to minimize proofing both before and after they were shaped. I let my dough proof in bulk (meaning before it was divided and shaped) until it expanded by about half, which took less than 90 minutes. I then moved the shaped pretzels to the fridge immediately after shaping, which keeps them from expanding too much until they’re baked.

Techniques for Properly Shaping the Pretzels

I’ve yet to learn the in-the-air, flick-of-the-wrist method most professional pretzel makers use to shape the twists, but shaping pretzels on the counter is relatively easy, and the result is identical. Here’s the gist of it: You’ll roll out the divided dough into a log, then into a rope that’s eventually 24-inches long before shaping it into an upside down U and twisting the arms around themselves twice. Finally, you fold the twist back toward the curve of the U and adjust the arms so they form three even windows, and press the tips down into the dough to seal.

Refrigerating and Dipping the Pretzels

Because pretzels are easier to move around and dip in lye once cold, many recipes will have you place them in the fridge before baking. Refrigerating the pretzels also makes the recipe a little more convenient, since you can dip and bake them within a few hours or wait as long as 24 hours to do it. (Keep in mind that if you refrigerate them for longer than a few hours, tiny micro-blisters tend to form on the pretzels during baking. Heike says that most Germans would consider this a defect, though it’s one that is purely aesthetic and not textural.) To ensure the pretzels form the snappy skin that Heike insists they should, I let them sit uncovered in the fridge so they can dry out a little while the oven preheats. 

To give German pretzels the appropriate flavor, aroma, color, and shine, there’s only one real option: lye. Unlike many other breads, pretzels are traditionally bathed in an alkaline solution before baking, which alters the structure of their starches and proteins This subsequently helps the exterior of the pretzels brown more deeply, changes their flavor, and gives them their signature shine.

How to Work With Lye Safely

Lye, or sodium hydroxide, is a strong base that’s dangerous when handled improperly and can cause severe burns. With that said, dipping your pretzels in lye will give you far superior results to other alternatives, like baking soda or “baked” baking soda. (More on that below.) To dip your pretzels in lye, you’ll let them sit in a 4% lye-to-water solution for 30 seconds or so, then let them drain on a rack before sprinkling them with salt and baking them.

Yes, lye is dangerous stuff, particularly when used carelessly, but so are many things we all commonly work with in the kitchen: boiling water, hot frying oil, the sharp edge of a knife, to name just a few. And as with most of these things, the trick is to keep it far from bare skin or eyeballs. With the proper safety gear (protective eyewear and a pair of gloves), a neat, organized setup, and the appropriate level of respect, lye need not be something to fear. I’ve now made dozens of lye-dipped pretzels and, thanks to a cautious approach, have never spilled lye on myself or my countertops. (For specific tips on how to work with and dispose of  lye, see below.)

But if using a lye solution still feels too intimidating, dipping your pretzels in baking soda—or sodium bicarbonate—is an alternative option. Baking soda is also a base, but it’s much weaker compared to lye. You can heat baking soda in the oven to convert it into sodium carbonate, a somewhat more powerful base, but it still won’t be as potent as lye and thus won't produce a pretzel's signature deep-brown crust and unmistakable pretzel-y flavor.

Regardless of whether you use baking soda or sodium carbonate, you’ll need to simmer the pretzels in those non-lye baths—and not just dip them—in order to get that glossy sheen when baking. Furthermore, unlike lye, which cooks off completely in the oven, both baking soda and sodium carbonate leave a soapy taste unless you give the pretzels an additional rinse in cold water before baking. While the baking soda method is an acceptable substitute, especially if you use the “baked” version, I highly recommend using lye if you’re after the real-deal look and flavor of pretzels.

Baking the Pretzels

Once the pretzels have been dipped, all that’s left to do is sprinkle them with pretzel salt—which is specially formulated to have a dense texture and a square shape so it sticks well to the pretzels—and bake. If you don’t have pretzel salt, coarse kosher or flaky salt will work in a pinch. It’s essential to bake the pretzels on a nonstick surface, whether that be a silicone baking mat or nonstick parchment paper, since the pretzels are prone to sticking to unlined baking sheets. (Do not use uncoated parchment paper, or you’ll be picking bits of it out of your teeth later on.)

The last trick I learned from Heike was to mist the pretzels lightly with water at the end of the bake, which gives them their mirror-like sheen. 

Like certain other breads (baguettes, for example), soft pretzels, German or otherwise, are ephemeral things: at their peak within a few hours of baking (or even better, fresh from the oven), but quick to fade into staleness. Without a bakery nearby that made them regularly, I never really knew just how amazing they could be. But with lots of help from Heike and a bit of practice, this recipe changed everything, and they have been in regular rotation in my kitchen ever since. I’m guessing that once you try it, you’ll feel the same way too.

For the Poolish: In a medium bowl, whisk together flour and yeast to combine. Add water and, using a dough whisk or wooden spoon, stir until combined and no dry bits remain. Cover tightly and let sit at warm room temperature (72 to 77˚F; 22 to 25ºC) until dough is bubbly and has expanded by about half, 3 to 4 hours. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours or up to 24 hours.

For the Dough: Add water and butter to bowl with the poolish and, using a dough whisk or wooden spoon, stir until mixture is mostly uniform. In a medium bowl, whisk to combine flour and salt. Add flour mixture to the poolish, water, and butter mixture and knead by hand until shaggy but uniform dough forms. Cover well and let sit at warm room temperature (72 to 77˚F; 22 to 25ºC) for 30 minutes. 

Using slightly moistened hands, knead dough in bowl until uniform in texture, 15 to 30 seconds. Cover well and let sit until puffy and expanded by about half, 60 to 90 minutes.

To Form the Pretzels: Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper lightly coated with nonstick cooking spray. Lightly flour top of dough, then transfer to a lightly-floured work surface. Using a dough scraper, divide dough into 6 equal wedges of about 88g (3 ounces) each. Starting with the pointy end of the wedge, roll each wedge into a log about 3 inches long, pinching the edge of the rolled-up log along its length to seal. (Do not pinch the log's ends closed.) Cover the logs with an inverted container large enough to contain them all without touching, or a clean plastic garbage bag.

Clear your countertop of any flour, then, working one log at a time, roll each log into an 18-inch-long rope of even thickness, rolling from the center out to press out any large bubbles. (If the dough sticks to your hands or countertop, lightly flour your hands and not the dough itself; in order to roll the dough evenly, you need friction between the dough and countertop. If the dough begins to slide around on the countertop, lightly mist your hands with water using a spray bottle.)

Taper the outer 6 inches on either end of the rope slightly and continue rolling until the rope is 24 inches total. (Be sure to measure the dough after it has sat for a few seconds; if the rope shrinks after sitting for a few seconds, allow the dough to rest for several minutes, then resume rolling until it is 24 inches long.)

Lay the rope on the countertop and draw the two ends toward you to form a U-shape. Cross the two ends of the rope over themselves twice, then fold this bundle over itself toward the bend of the U so that the two ends of the rope just overlap the curve. Adjust the placement of the tips so that 3 even windows form, then press the tips down to seal. Transfer the pretzel to the prepared baking sheet and cover loosely with a clean plastic garbage bag. Repeat with the remaining logs, spacing the pretzels evenly apart on the baking sheet.

Transfer the loosely covered baking sheet to the refrigerator and chill for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 400ºF (205ºC). While the oven preheats, remove the bag from the baking sheet of pretzels and allow pretzels to sit in the fridge uncovered, at least 30 minutes (and up to an hour)

For Dipping the Pretzels (see 'Notes' for an alternative method using baking soda): If using a lye dip, set a wire rack inside a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment; spray rack with nonstick cooking spray. Line a second baking sheet with parchment and place it next to the first one. In a large, non-reactive container (such as a Pyrex, glass, or stainless steel bowl or baking dish), add the water. Set the container in the center of the second pan. Wearing gloves and protective eyewear, sprinkle lye over the surface of the water and allow to dissolve, about 5 minutes. (It is very important you put the full amount of water in the container first and then add the lye; if you put the lye in the container and then pour water on top you could cause a violent reaction.) Cover the container loosely with parchment while the oven heats.

Wearing gloves and protective eyewear, transfer one pretzel to the lye bath, bottom side up, and let sit for 30 to 40 seconds. (If necessary, use a non-reactive spoon to gently keep the pretzel fully submerged.) Using gloved hands, transfer the pretzel face up to the rack to drain. Repeat with the remaining pretzels. When all the pretzels have been dipped, transfer them back to the original rimmed baking sheet face up and spaced evenly apart. Sprinkle pretzels evenly with pretzel salt and transfer to oven. Bake until dark brown, 12 to 14 minutes. (The lye-dipped pretzels will naturally be darker than the ones dipped in baking soda.) Using a spray bottle, mist pretzels lightly with water and return to oven until the pretzels have a glossy sheen, 30 seconds.

Remove pretzels from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Special Equipment

Silicone baking mat or nonstick parchment, spray bottle filled with water

Notes

King Arthur Baking happens to make an all-purpose flour with an unusually high protein percentage, but most all-purpose flour is not high-protein and wouldn’t work well here. If you aren’t using a high-protein all-purpose flour like the one from King Arthur, bread floru is the next best option.

If using baking soda to dip the pretzels: adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 350ºF (175ºC). Spread 1/2 cup (4 ounces; 115g) baking soda on a rimmed baking sheet in a thin layer and bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool completely and transfer to a container until needed. 

When ready to dip the pretzels, set a wire rack inside a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment. In a large enameled Dutch oven, place 8 cups (1920ml) in water and add the baking soda. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a gentle simmer and cover until needed. Place 4 cups of cold water in a bowl and set it near the stovetop on top of a sheet of parchment to catch any drips.

Wearing gloves, transfer one pretzel to the baking soda bath, bottom side up, and let sit for 30 to 40 seconds. (If necessary, use a non-reactive spoon to gently keep the pretzel fully submerged.) Using gloved hands, transfer the pretzel face down to the cold water bath and let sit for 30 to 40 seconds. Transfer the pretzel, facing up, to the wire rack. Repeat with remaining pretzels.

When all the pretzels have been dipped, transfer them back to the original rimmed baking sheet face up and spaced evenly apart. Sprinkle pretzels evenly with pretzel salt and transfer to oven. Bake until dark brown, 12 to 14 minutes. Using a spray bottle, mist pretzels lightly with water and return to oven for 30 seconds, until the pretzels have a glossy sheen.

Food-grade lye and pretzel salt can be purchased online or from baking supply stores.

Safety Tips for Working With Lye

Always wear gloves and protective eyewear when working with lye. 

Always add lye to water and not the other way around. When water and lye combine, the mixture heats up; sprinkling lye gradually to a large amount of water prevents a violent and potentially hazardous situation.

You can use any non-reactive container you want to hold your lye bath—plastic, stainless steel, or glass—but I like using a shallow rectangular glass storage container with a snug snap-top lid. Not only does it help to keep the lye contained when not in use, it allows me to reuse the bath for multiple batches of pretzels. (I find it starts to lose its potency after 3 or 4 sets.)

Lye will stain wood, aluminum and other non-stainless metals, and lots of other common kitchen surfaces as well. Using parchment-lined rimmed baking sheets is a good way to keep it contained in case of spills, and the parchment is easily discarded once you are done. 

I use a clean, moist sponge to mop up occasional spills, and wring it out under running water. If you want, you can use a sponge dipped in white vinegar to neutralize the lye on contact instead.

To dispose of the used lye bath, just run cold water in your kitchen sink and carefully pour it down the drain. A 4% solution is weaker than one used to unclog drains, so it will do no harm to your pipes and will be neutralized quickly in your sewer or septic system.  

Make-Ahead and Storage

Bavarian pretzels are best eaten within 4 hours of baking.

It’s almost embarrassing to be here raving about what is essentially an open-weave macramé dishcloth, but the Teiger Dough Cloth might just be the best thing to happen to kitchen cleanup tools in ages, especially (but not only) for bread bakers. I’m working on a bread cookbook right now, which means I’ve been baking bread on a near-daily basis for months, and the Teiger has been an essential tool for keeping on top of all the dishes and kitchen cleanup. And I've come to realize that, while it is a tool that was created for bread baking, its usefulness extends well beyond the baking world.

Anyone who bakes bread regularly will already know what I’m getting at, but if not, here’s the deal: Bread dough is notoriously hard to remove from all the places it isn’t meant to be—hands, bowls, dough hooks, countertops, sinks, and on and on. Dough consists of two main elements: Starch and gluten, the stretchy, sticky proteins that give bread dough structure and volume. When dough encounters water, the starches wash away easily, leaving behind the gluten, which transforms into a gummy goop that clings tenaciously to nearly everything it encounters. Soft sponges and dishcloths just push this stuff around pointlessly, while abrasive sponges, scrubby pads, brushes, and steel wool quickly get gunked up entirely, turning them into just another object in need of being cleaned. And thanks to the tightly-woven structure of these tools, the gluten is challenging, if not impossible, to remove from them, even when run through a dishwasher.

Enter the Teiger Dough Cloth, a 12-inch square of acrylic thread twisted and knotted into an open mesh. Being acrylic, it is flexible enough to bend like any other dishcloth or sponge, while still being just stiff and abrasive enough to detach stuck-on bits of dough from hands, tools, and surfaces without scratching them. Best of all, its open weave magically prevents it from holding on to the gluten blobs, which instead wash easily away under running water, allowing you to keep on scrubbing until the kitchen is completely spic-and-span. (Those few bits that do cling to the Teiger usually come off after a journey through the dishwasher.)

Here’s another way the Teiger beats most other scrubby kitchen cleaning tools: It is durable. Unlike sponges and scrubby pads that fall apart, stain, or turn into germy petri dishes after a week or two of use, the acrylic (i.e., plastic) Teiger lasts for a long time. How long I can't say, but I’ve been using the same one for six months now, and I run it through the dishwasher every other day or so, and it remains good-as-new. 

There’s one cleanup job Teiger especially excels at: Removing dough from wooden countertops. Professional bakers (and wannabe professional bakers like me) work on butcher block counters because they provide the right amount of friction for shaping loaves while also remaining relatively nonstick. Soft tools like sponges and soft cloths don’t do anything to pluck off the bits of dough that remain stuck to its surface, while abrasive tools like steel wool scrubbies can scratch the soft wood. The Teiger, meanwhile, works a charm on butcher block, especially since it is flexible and thin enough that you can feel the dough bits under your hand, allowing you to remove every last one.

And while the Teiger was created specifically to tackle sticky bread dough residue, it really is an all-purpose scrubby that most anyone would find a useful addition to their kitchen cleanup routine. It works equally well on the goopy, stuck-on bits of any sort of food, not just gluten blobs, and it is gentle enough to work anywhere without the risk of scratching. It's not quite abrasive enough to remove burned-on residues from pots and pans—I use a sponge and scouring powder or paste for that—but it does the trick on just about anything else. (I especially like using mine to clean my stainless-steel sink at the end of the day.) 

FAQs

How many Teiger Dough Cleaning Cloths come in each order?

Each box includes two Teiger Dough Cloths, one for now and one for later on (or one to share with a friend). 

How do you clean the Teiger Dough Cleaning Cloths?

I usually just rinse it off and run it through the dishwasher with every wash (draped over the front edge of the top drawer). If it’s heavily gooped up, I’ll let the cloth sit in a bowl of warm water for an hour or so and then pull off any large globs of gluten before moving it to the dishwasher.

Devoted sourdough bakers eventually come to realize that controlling the temperature of their sourdough starter is one essential key to success. That’s because, unlike commercial yeast, which is single-use and ready-to-go on demand, a sourdough starter is a living organism (or, more accurately, a collection of living organisms, yeasts, and bacteria) that must be cared for regularly, not unlike a pet. And like pets, a sourdough starter gives back only what is given to it. Neglect it, and it will produce dull, flat, and sour loaves; treat it with love and attend to its needs, and bread will rise tall and true.

The needs of a sourdough starter are singular—to be given fresh flour and water on a regular basis and to be kept within its preferred temperature range. People sometimes casually refer to this practice as “feeding” a starter, but it is more accurate to call it a refreshment. That’s because, unlike feeding a cat or dog, you don’t give flour and water to the starter. Instead, you transfer a small portion of the culture to a fresh container of flour and water for it to both consume and inhabit.

How frequently a starter needs refreshing depends upon how often it gets used: In a bakery making sourdough bread day-in, day-out, it might happen two or three times a day. For a home baker making only one or two loaves a week, it happens every seven days or so; in between refreshments, the starter can be stored in the refrigerator, where the cold temperatures slow down its growth. This is a reliable and simple way to maintain a sourdough starter at home, but there is one major problem with it: Refrigerator temperatures (34-38˚F / 1-3˚C) are not really within its preferred temperature range. The bacteria and yeasts in a starter don't merely go dormant at refrigerator temperatures, they begin to die off; the longer a starter is held at those temperatures, the longer it takes to fully recover before its next use.

A sourdough culture's ideal temperature range is around 78˚F; when refreshed daily and kept at that temperature, a starter will usually remain in peak form at all times. Stored in the fridge in between uses, a starter usually needs one or more extra refreshments to restore the culture to full vigor. And even then it likely won't leaven a loaf of bread as well as one refreshed daily at room temperature. A home baker could keep their starter at room temperature too, but this would require a lot of extra work and much-wasted flour since the portion of the culture not used in each refreshment is typically discarded. 

The Sourdough Home: An Introduction

Or instead they could keep it in a Brod & Taylor Sourdough Home, a $99 countertop "micro-fridge” designed specifically for storing and maintaining a sourdough. The Sourdough Home has precise temperature control from 41-122˚F (5-50˚C) and a chamber that can hold a container up to 1-liter in size (or several smaller ones), more than enough room for the average home baker’s needs. I’ve had a Sourdough Home for a few months now, and I have found it to work exactly as advertised: It cools (or warms) the starter to within 2˚F of the set point and holds it there indefinitely.

The Sourdough Home’s wide temperature range means it can be used in many different ways, depending upon a baker’s needs. The Home was designed in consultation with Maurizio Leo, the baker behind The Perfect Loaf, a website dedicated to all things sourdough baking, and the author of the 2023 James Beard-winning sourdough baking book, also called The Perfect Loaf. Since Leo inspired the Home, I reached out to ask him how he thought most home bakers would want to use one. 

“It depends on their baking frequency," he told me. “For example, since I bake super often, I have it set to 78˚F, and I just keep my starter in there.” Leo lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where average temperatures are above 78˚F for at least half of the year, so the Home serves as a tiny, temperature-controlled refuge for his starter. "It's kind of like a protective little area, and then it's ready to use whenever I want to start baking. For me, that's basically every day." The Home could work similarly for a baker somewhere or during those months when ambient temperatures are lower than 78˚F too (where I live in New England, our kitchen rarely gets above 68˚F from October to May).

Though Leo doesn’t run a bakery, he treats his starter as if he does, since he’s always working on recipes for his website. For more casual bakers, he recommends dialing things down instead. “Those who bake less often will want to set the Home to a lower temperature,” he said. “For most people, I’d recommend the three-day cycle that I've been working on, [with the Home] set to 50-52˚F.” A three-day cycle lets a home baker get away with refreshing their starter just two or three times a week, while keeping it at temperatures far more hospitable to the bacteria and yeast than in a fridge, so that it is ready to use with just a single room-temperature refreshment before adding it to a dough. This is pretty much how I’ve been using mine lately, and it has never been happier: My loaves are rising faster and expanding more fully than ever before, all with a couple of extra quick refreshments each week. 

There’s at least one other specialized use for the Sourdough Home: panettone, the highly enriched, sweet Italian bread traditionally served around the Christmas holidays. While panettone can be made using commercial yeast, the very best ones are made using a sourdough culture known as a ‘pasta madre’ or ‘lieveto madre.’ This culture is extremely fussy to work with, requiring even more precision and care than a regular sourdough starter; one of its many requirements is that it be fermented with a specific, narrow temperature range in order to avoid the buildup of unwelcome acidity.

Since I have zero experience with panettone, I reached out to my friend Olga Koutseridi, a baker whose gorgeous panettone I have been admiring for a long time on Instagram, to ask how she’d use the Sourdough Home to help make the breads. “I would use it for the overnight maintenance of the lievito madre,” she told me. “I maintain mine at 16˚C, or 60˚F. It needs to stay at that temperature for 19 to 24 hours. It is non-negotiable: if you want to make panettone, you need a temperature-controlled environment that doesn't get hotter than 64˚F/18˚C, or the acidity will go off balance.” 

Koutseridi currently uses a mini wine fridge for this purpose, but she likes the wider temperature range, more compact footprint, and less-painful sticker price of the Sourdough Home: “For someone who's serious about making good panettone at home, the Sourdough Home makes total sense to me.”

Tips for Sourdough Home Success

Leo is currently working on a detailed Sourdough Home user guide for The Perfect Loaf website, but in the meantime, I have a few tips to share of my own:

• Be careful not to block the vents on the rear and sides of the device. The ventilation they provide is essential to keeping the temperature inside the home stable. (I learned this the hard way when mine quickly climbed nearly 30 degrees after having pushed it too close to the back wall of my kitchen counter.)
• You’ll also need to experiment with the ratio of your particular starter in order to determine how best to keep it in the Sourdough Home. I make mine using a 5:5:1 ratio, or 5 parts flour, 5 parts water, and 1 part starter, by weight, which works well with a 3- to 4-day refreshment cycle. 
• At 78˚F/26˚C, a healthy starter will typically triple in volume before it needs to be refreshed again. Gasses expand less when cold, which means you won’t see as much growth when you use a Sourdough Home at lower temperatures. My starter generally doubles in volume after three days at 50˚F/10˚C. (Like many sourdough enthusiasts, I use a rubber band to mark the initial level of the culture, and a tall, straight-sided container, so that it is easy to eyeball how much it has expanded.)

Like I said, the Sourdough Home works exactly as advertised: It cools or warms a culture over a wide range of temperatures, and holds it there stably for the long term. For the casual or beginning sourdough baker, a home refrigerator is more than adequate to store a culture between uses, but for serious sourdough heads looking to increase the potency of their starter (or considering experimenting with panettone), the Sourdough Home might just be the start of something good.

FAQs

How often do you feed a sourdough starter?

From twice daily, if baking in a professional setting day in, day out, to once a week or so, for a home baker. In a Sourdough Home set at 50˚F/10˚C, you might feed it two or three times a week to keep it at optimal vigor.

What temperature is best for a sourdough starter?

The “ideal” temperature for a starter is around 78˚F/26˚C, at least if it is in active, regular use. For longer-term storage, cooler temperatures slightly above refrigerator temperatures are ideal, around 50˚F/10˚C. 

Editor's note: We received a press sample of the Sourdough Home, but all of our opinions are our own.

As a thin, chewy-crisp flatbread with an aromatic, bright-red topping on it, lahmajun gets called “Armenian pizza” by non-Armenians all the time. This is fine, since it does give non-Armenians a solid point of reference for an otherwise unfamiliar dish, though the analogy really only goes so far. Where pizza is topped with cheese and a tomato-based sauce, lahmajun is cheeseless and topped with a thin layer of a lamb- or beef-based paste that is intensely flavored with chiles, tomato, aromatic onion, garlic, red bell pepper, parsley, and warm spices. The onion and bell pepper are finely ground and drained of excess water, so the topping emerges from the oven steaming and moist, but not wet. In this way, lahmajun is less like pizza and more like a ground meat kofta—an Armenian “hamburger," if you will—smooshed into a thin layer onto the bread. Nevertheless, lahmajun and pizza are both absolutely delicious, especially when eaten hot from the oven, and both are easy to make at home, provided you have the right recipe (namely, mine).

The Key Techniques for Properly Shaped, Tender Flatbreads

As with many flatbreads (including pizza), the dough for lahmajun is rolled out thinly before being topped. But this poses a technical challenge. On the one hand, we want to roll out and shape the flatbread properly, but on the other, we want to prevent excessive gluten formation from overworking the dough, which can result in a tough or chewy texture. So, how does one get the dough rolled out and shaped properly without causing it to deform or get tough in the process? Over the years, I’ve come up with a bunch of strategies for flatbread success, several of which I employ here. 

First, I mix the dough gently, without kneading of any kind, other than a short hand mixing in the bowl to get the ingredients fully combined. This might seem counterintuitive, since breads often require structure-building via kneading, but as long as you choose the right flour—bread flour, in this case, with its high percentage of gluten-forming proteins—you end up with more than enough structure to yield a chewy-crisp flatbread without calling for kneading. 

Secondly, I shape the dough into balls after a brief room-temperature fermentation—about 90 minutes, just long enough to let the yeast in it wake up and the dough expand a bit—and then move them into the refrigerator. After that, they continue to ferment slowly, for at least eight hours (and up to 24 hours). Shaping the dough balls early on in a long fermentation gives the dough ample time to relax, which makes rolling it out easy, while also building flavor.

Cold-proofing shaped dough balls also builds a measure of convenience into the recipe, because you make the dough one day and bake them the next. Best of all, unlike many flatbreads, you roll out the lahmajun dough cold, straight from the fridge, so you can start baking as soon as the oven and baking surface is hot, without having to spend time letting the dough warm up before use.

Aside from flour, water, salt, and yeast, my dough formula contains a touch of vegetable oil for added tenderness and to promote crisping, along with a little sugar, to promote rapid browning. 

How to Make a Flavorful—Not Wet—Topping

To control the water content in the topping, I grind the onion and red bell pepper in a food processor along with a generous amount of salt; I then move the mixture to a strainer to drain for 10 minutes. The salt draws excess water from the vegetables, which drips through the strainer into a bowl below. This helps reduce a watery topping later.

After that, I return the drained mixture to the food processor, along with the remaining seasonings: parsley, red pepper paste (a.k.a. biber salçasi in Turkish—most brands are made there), tomato paste, a few garlic cloves, allspice, paprika, cumin, and black pepper. I process everything to a fine, even paste, then add the meat in small nuggets and pulse everything together until it just comes together, to retain some texture to the meat. 

As for what type of meat to use, beef or lamb, that’s up to you. I like lamb best myself, but I’m Armenian, so that’s a given. No matter which you choose, try to find meat that is freshly ground with a coarse-but-even texture; usually this means going to a butcher. Classically, the topping for lahmajun was hand-minced with a knife (or a pair of them), which divides it finely without mashing it to an amorphous paste; using freshly ground meat is the next best thing to hand-mincing it. That said, if all you can find is prepackaged meat, use it! I do sometimes, and it works fine. 

As with the dough, the topping can be made up to 24 hours ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator. You do want to let it warm at room temperature for about 30 minutes before baking, since that will make it easier to spread without mashing or deforming the rolled-out dough.

How to Assemble and Bake Lahmajun

Traditionally, lahmajun is baked in blazing hot wood-fired ovens. The good news is that you can still make a great one in a home oven at a temperature of 500˚F (or 550˚F, if you are lucky enough to have an oven that goes that high), as long as you use a solid home pizza baking approach:

Cook them on a preheated baking stone or, preferably for more conductivity, a baking steel (heated at your maximum oven temperature at least 30 minutes for a steel or an hour for a stone), and placed high in the oven, which ensures rapid heating from both above and below, for even, quick cooking. Just make sure not to set the oven rack so high that it’s a challenge to get the lahmajun in and out; you want to give yourself four to five inches of headroom, which means either the top or second from the top rack position.

Once the surface is good and hot, you can get down to baking. Because the dough should be nice and relaxed by now, it won’t take much effort to pat and roll out. Be sure to use plenty of flour on the dough and the counter to prevent sticking, to avoid tearing or overworking it. It's best to roll from the center out, rotating the dough regularly, to keep the circle as round as possible. Once it is between 11 and 12 inches, move it to a floured peel. 

Pro lahmajun bakers just smoosh the topping with their fingertips around the dough in a matter of seconds, but this takes lots and lots of practice to pull off without manhandling the dough and/or making an unsanitary mess. I use a different approach to minimize hand contact with the paste: You scoop the topping mixture in a 1/2 cup dry measuring cup and use a small spoon to distribute dollops of it evenly around the disc. You then use the back of the spoon and a fingertip to flatten the dollops and cover the dough completely, aside from a 1/8-inch-wide border.

Then it goes into the oven to bake until the crust is browned around the edges and on the underside, which takes about five minutes. (The topping will be steaming hot at this point, but it should not dry out or brown.) While one bakes you can roll out the next one, and all four flatbreads should take less than half an hour to complete. 

Serving Lahmajun

Lahmajun is great with little more than a squirt of fresh lemon juice as a foil for its richness. But it’s also often served with a crisp, cool, and tart vegetable salad, either as a side dish, or—better yet—as a filling to fold or wrap the flatbread around, burrito-style. One classic Armenian salad I like to use here is thinly-sliced red onion and parsley, dressed with ground sumac, lemon juice, and olive oil. To temper the pungency of the onion, I first soak it in boiling water for 5 minutes to pull off most of the intense sulfur compounds that form when it is cut.

Once you try it—it makes a great light lunch and is a welcome addition to a mezze spread—I think you’ll agree that while lahmajun and pizza are not the same, both are worth adding to your flatbread repertoire.

For the Dough: In a medium bowl, whisk together bread flour, yeast, sugar, and salt until thoroughly combined. In a separate medium bowl, combine water and 10g (2 teaspoons) oil. Add half of flour mixture to oil-water mixture and stir with a dough whisk or a whisk until a smooth batter forms. Add remaining flour mixture and stir with a whisk or knead by hand until a shaggy dough forms and no dry flour remains. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Using lightly-moistened hands, knead dough in bowl gently until it tightens up, 10 to 20 seconds, then gather dough into a smooth ball. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let stand at warm room temperature (75˚F/24˚C) until dough is puffy and about 1 1/2 times in volume, 1 to 2 hours.

On a lightly-floured work surface, divide dough into 4 equal portions (7 ounces; about 175g each). Add remaining 13g (1 tablespoon) oil to now-empty dough bowl and set aside. Shape each portion into a tight, smooth ball, making sure to seal seams on the underside tightly. Working one at a time, set each dough ball in the oil-containing bowl and, using your hands, turn to evenly coat the exterior. Transfer dough balls to a lightly-oiled rimmed baking sheet or individual containers (such as pint-sized deli containers), seam side down. Cover loosely but completely with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours.

For the Topping: In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade, combine bell pepper, onion, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Process, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, until finely chopped, 10 to 20 seconds. Transfer mixture to a fine-mesh strainer set over a medium bowl and let drain for at least 10 minutes.

Using a flexible spatula, press on onion-pepper mixture to extract any remaining liquid, then return to food processor bowl; discard drained liquid. Add parsley, pepper paste, tomato paste, garlic, allspice, paprika, cumin, pepper, and remaining 3/4 teaspoon salt. Process, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, until mixture is finely chopped, 10 to 20 seconds.

Using your hands, break ground meat into walnut-sized chunks and distribute around bowl. Process, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, until mixture is just combined, 5 to 10 pulses. Transfer to an airtight container and use right away or refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

For the Salad (optional): Meanwhile, place red onion in a medium heatproof bowl, cover by at least 1 inch boiling water, and let stand for 5 minutes. Drain onion through a fine-mesh strainer then rinse for 10 seconds under cold running water and shake dry. Transfer to a clean kitchen towel or paper towel and pat dry. Return onion to now-empty bowl, along with parsley, sumac, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine, season with salt and pepper to taste, and set aside.

To Assemble and Bake the Lahmajun: One hour before baking, adjust an oven rack to the upper-middle position (rack should be 4 to 5 inches from broiler element), set a baking stone or steel on rack, and heat oven to 500˚F (or 550˚F, if your even allows it).

Thirty minutes before baking, remove topping from refrigerator and allow to warm slightly at room temperature, about 30 minutes.

Dust tops of dough balls liberally with flour, then transfer to a well-floured work surface, seam side down. Working one at a time, use the heel of your hand to press a dough ball into a 5-inch disk. Using a rolling pin, gently roll the disk into an 11- to 12-inch round, adding flour to top and underside of dough and countertop as needed to prevent sticking.

Transfer to a well-floured baking peel (or a rimless cookie sheet if you don't have a baking peel). Scatter one-quarter of topping (1/2 cup; 125g) evenly over top of dough in 1-teaspoon amounts. Using the back of a spoon and your fingertips, gently flatten and spread topping into an even layer, leaving 1/8-inch border untopped.

Shake peel to loosen dough, then carefully slide lahmajun onto baking stone. Bake until bottom crust is browned and upper edges are lightly browned, 4 to 6 minutes. While lahmajun bakes, begin rolling next dough ball. Transfer baked lahmajun to a wire rack, stacking or overlapping them on the wire rack as they're finished. Repeat assembling and baking steps with the remaining dough balls and topping.

Once all 4 lahmajun are baked, return them to the oven, overlapping them to fit on the stone, until reheated, about 2 minutes (alternatively, you can eat them warm, room temperature, or cold—lahmajun are great at all temperatures). Serve lahmajun with onion-parsley salad, if desired, and lemon wedges.

Special Equipment

Kitchen scale, food processor, rolling pin (preferably straight), baking steel or stone, wide pizza peel or rimless baking sheet, wire rack

Notes

For best results, use a digital scale set in grams to measure ingredients for the dough. For the yeast, using a jeweler’s scale will give you the most precise measurement possible. 

Biber salçasi can be found in Middle Eastern grocery stores or online. If unavailable, increase volume of tomato paste to 3 tablespoons, paprika to 4 teaspoons, and add 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.

Ground sumac can be found at Middle Eastern markets or online.

Make-Ahead and Storage

The topping and salad can be made up to 24 hours in advance and refrigerated separately in airtight containers. Bring the salad to room temperature before serving. 

To reheat lahmajun, place pairs of them on a baking sheet face to face (topping sides in contact with one another) and transfer to a 300˚F oven until hot and crisp, 10 to 12 minutes.

For my family and many other Armenians, autumn meant it was time to sock two things away for the long winter ahead: sujuk, an air-cured, heavily spiced beef sausage, and tourshi, pickled vegetables in a tangy, lightly-spiced vinegar brine. In Armenia—as well as in numerous other countries in the region—tourshi (or turshi) just means “pickles,” and the dish can be made with just about any crisp, edible-when-raw vegetable you can think of. Armenians set tourshi on the dining table no matter the occasion, but it is an essential component of any mezze spread or a side dish alongside entrées. 

When we make tourshi, we just buy a mess of vegetables and pack them into as many containers as necessary. In my family, we usually made it from a greatest-hits collection of crunchy things—carrots, celery, cauliflower, cabbage, unripe green tomatoes, turnips, and tender-skinned long sweet peppers—but the process works no matter what combination you choose, and I often use it to pickle whatever I have on hand and need to preserve for later on. With that said, I have tried to be as prescriptive as possible in this recipe. In order to make sure you have enough vegetables and brine to fill your jars, and given that different vegetables will take up different amounts of space in the jars, you’ll have to start with more than you can possibly use and repurpose whatever you can't manage to fit. 

The method for making tourshi is simple: You cut the vegetables into bite-size pieces or short spears, and pack them into containers, along with a scoop of whole aromatic spices, a few sprigs of parsley, a couple of garlic cloves, and however many hot peppers you want. Tourshi can be spicy, but it isn’t always; use as many hot peppers as you like, but take care you don’t overdo it and make the pickles intolerably hot, unless that is your thing.

My parents always put their tourshi into large ceramic crocks that they stored in an unheated cellar all winter, but just about any sealable heatproof container will do; my  recipe is crafted to use four one-quart mason jars. Once the containers are filled, you bring a mixture of water, cider vinegar, and salt to a boil, and then carefully pour the hot brine over the vegetables. Adding the hot liquid directly on top gently par-cooks the vegetables just enough to increase their tenderness without sacrificing their texture. You then seal the containers and leave them for five days at room temperature, during which time the vegetables soften further and the flavors of the pickles meld.

With large containers like crocks, you can place a plate or another heavy object on top to hold the vegetables under the brine; in jars, just flip them over once a day to keep everything sufficiently submerged. After that, they go into the refrigerator to chill for a day before being ready to serve. Your finished tourshi probably won’t stick around too long, but if it does, it keeps for six months or longer in the fridge.

I trust that after you make this recipe once, you’ll get the hang of the basic method and will be inspired to use it to preserve all sorts of vegetables, in whatever inventive combinations you desire.

In a small bowl, combine mustard, coriander, peppercorns, allspice, Aleppo pepper, and bay leaves. Stir until evenly combined, then set spice mixture aside.

On a clean work surface, cut vegetables into uniform pieces. For carrots, peel and cut into 1/2-inch sticks about 2 or 3 inches long. For cabbage, cut into quarters, remove core and tender outer leaves, and cut into 3/4- to 1-inch wide wedges lengthwise. For cauliflower, remove stem and cut into large florets. For celery, trim ends and cut into 1/2-inch sticks about 3 or 4 inches long. For green tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes. For turnips, peel and cut into 1/2-inch sticks about 2 to 3 inches long.

In the bottom of each clean, wide-mouth 1-quart canning jar, place 2 garlic cloves, 2 sprigs parsley, 1 clove, and 2 teaspoons of the spice mixture, then divide the remaining spice mixture evenly among the jars. Add vegetables, sweet peppers, and hot peppers, a few pieces at a time, to the jars, rotating between them, until each jar is filled to within 1/2 inch of rim, packing them as tightly as possible without crushing the contents. (You will have leftover vegetables; save remainder for another use.)

In a nonreactive stainless-steel pot or enameled Dutch oven, combine cider vinegar, water, and salt and bring to boil over high heat. Pour brine into jars until vegetables are covered; discard any remaining brine). Using a spoon, push contents of jars down into brine to ensure everything is submerged, then seal tightly, and invert jars. Let sit at room temperature for 5 days, turning jars over once a day. Refrigerate jars for at least 1 day before serving.

Serve as a snack, as part of a mezze spread, or as a side alongside a main course of your choosing.

Special Equipment

4 wide-mouth 1-quart canning jars with lids and bands

Notes

Aleppo chile peppers, which have been cultivated in Syria for centuries, are quite mild in terms of heat, with a hint of raisin-y, sun-dried tomato sweetness. Due to the ongoing civil war, true Aleppo pepper from Syria is no longer available for import, but chiles grown in neighboring Turkey are. You can find Aleppo pepper at Middle Eastern markets, or online. Korean gochugaru or 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes can be substituted for the Aleppo pepper in this recipe.

Take care when adding hot peppers to tourshi, especially if they are on the spicy side; it’s better to err on the side of caution and add more next time around if you want more heat.

You can also make this recipe in 2 half-gallon jars, if desired.

Make-Ahead and Storage

Tourshi can be refrigerated for at least 6 months and up to 1 year, though they will be at their best in the first 6 months: the vegetables will slowly soften over time but will remain edible throughout.

As I’ve said elsewhere, making baguettes that rival the best that bakeries have to offer is challenging, but it’s a fun challenge to attempt, and even less-than-perfect results will be better than anything you can get at a supermarket. Some of the challenges are overcome by memorizing and perfecting the many steps involved, which takes time and practice. Others involve simply investing in all the many tools baguettes require. While you can make an excellent boule-shaped loaf of bread using little more than a colander, a clean kitchen towel, a sharp knife, and a cast iron Dutch oven, all of which most cooks have on hand already, baguettes require speciality tools to pull off successfully. Fortunately, none are terribly expensive, and most are useful for making other sorts of breads too (and a few are things you might already have on hand). Here’s an inventory of everything you need to make baguettes at home.

A digital scale (or two!)

Baguettes, like other bread and baking recipes, require precise measuring of ingredients, which means you’ll want an accurate digital scale to make these. Most people can get by with a standard tabletop scale that reads in grams and weighs quantities up to 11 pounds. But serious bread bakers might also want to invest in an inexpensive pocket jeweler's scale, since those are far more accurate when measuring sub-5-gram amounts of things, like yeast, salt, and diastatic malt powder. 

A 13- by 9-inch rectangular cake pan

It's important that the dough you use to make baguettes starts out in a more-or-less rectangular shape. When professional bakers make them, they begin by dividing a massive amount of dough into many rectangular baguette-sized portions, a relatively easy thing to do when working with a huge mass of dough. To achieve a similar effect at home, I like to cold-proof my dough in a rectangular 13- by 9-inch cake pan. The dough spreads out into a rectangle as it sits in the fridge, making it easy to divide into four fairly uniform pieces when it is turned out of the pan and onto a floured countertop later on. (You can also use any similarly-sized container, if you have one, like a rectangular snap-top plastic storage container.)

A bench scraper

To divide the dough into portions and to move the dough pieces around gently enough to avoid marring their shape, you want to use a metal bench scraper. (Bench scrapers are also useful for, well, scraping benches, something you’ll have to do once all the baguettes are in the oven.)

A couche

“Artisan“-style breads are usually proofed upside-down, in containers that help them hold their final shape (without the container, doughs will spread out as they proof and go blobby). Baguettes are usually proofed in the folds of a floured linen cloth known in French as a couche. Coarse, heavy linen is the fabric of choice for couches because it has enough heft to stay upright when pleated, and the right sort of texture to wick moisture away from the dough without also attaching itself to it. 

Couches come in a variety of lengths and widths, but it is important to find one sized appropriately.  The ideal dimensions of a home-scale couche are 17 inches wide and at least 20 inches long. I prefer the 18-inch wide couches from the San Francisco Baking Institute, because they are sized to fit a half-sheet. You could make your own couche if you can find a bolt of the right grade of linen, but pre-cut ones with hemmed edges that won’t fray aren’t all that more expensive than DIY versions.

A clean, plastic garbage bag

To keep doughs and shaped loaves from drying out as they rest or proof, bakeries keep them on rolling racks, covered with plastic. At home, you can use a clean plastic garbage bag instead. I keep a couple of them rolled up with my baking tools and reuse them over and over again. (The bag never touches the loaves directly, so there's no need for concern about food safety or to clean them afterwards.)

Transfer peel

Proofed baguettes ready to bake are too floppy and fragile to move to a baking peel. Instead, you need to use a thin, stiff, beveled-edge wooden board known as a transfer peel (or a "flipper board," as they are sometimes called). Again, a transfer peel is definitely something a handy person could fashion themselves, but commercial ones are inexpensive. They are a specialty item you’ll most likely need to order online.

Curved-blade lame

Bakers use an ultra-thin, ultra-sharp razor blade on a handle known as a lame (pronounced lahm) to score breads. For baguettes, you ideally want to use a curved-blade lame rather than a straight one, because the former is easier to orient at an extreme angle to the dough, which in turn helps to cut a "flap" of dough that will form a dramatic ear once the loaf is baked. (That said, a straight-bladed lame can work here too.) Most lames use replaceable, disposable double-edged shaving razor blades, which you can find at any drugstore. Be sure to start with a brand-new razor blade for maximum sharpness because razor blades dull far more quickly than you'd think; replace the blade regularly too. Lames are available at baking specialty stores or online.

Baking stone

In order to achieve an open, tender crumb and a crisp crust, baguettes need to bake quickly. For this reason, they are usually baked at a high temperature (500˚F) on a preheated baking stone, which pumps heat into the core of the loaf to encourage rapid oven spring (loaf expansion). If you don't have either of these yet, you’ll need to get one before you begin.

I don’t really recommend using a baking steel for baguettes. Steels are great baking tools because they are more conductive than stone and push heat more rapidly into the loaf. But with fast-cooking baguettes, this can be a liability, since they can burn before they are fully baked. If it is all you have, then you might want to set a baking sheet below the baguettes to insulate them, especially after you’ve removed the foil pan at the tail end of the bake.

Disposable turkey roasting pan and aluminum foil

Professional baguette bakers use steam-injected bread ovens to keep the exterior of the loaves moist at the start of the bake, for maximum oven spring and to produce the baguette's signature crisp, crumb-scattering crust. Steaming round or long-but-compact loaves in a home oven is easy to do by baking them inside of a Dutch oven or a dedicated bread pot—the container corrals moisture that evaporates from the dough, enveloping the loaf with steam—but there are no similar options that can comfortably hold a 14ish-inch long baguette. My workaround is to instead bake the baguettes underneath an upside-down disposable 17- by 13-inch turkey roasting pan wrapped tightly with aluminum foil. (After the baguettes have expanded fully and the crust has begun to set, the pan is removed to let the loaves finish browning and crisp up.)

Pizza peel

You'll also need a wide, flat pizza peel to load and unload the baguettes to and from the oven. While just about any sort will do, as long as it is at least 12 inches wide and long, I prefer a thin-bladed aluminum one myself, since it is lightweight and thin enough to slip under breads easily. In a pinch, a rimless cookie sheet can work quite well, though it obviously lacks the handle you get with a dedicated peel. 

Diastatic malt powder

While baguettes can be made with flours, salt, and instant yeast that you can find in most supermarkets, and water from the tap, there is one optional specialty ingredient you might want to get your hands on: diastatic malt powder. Not to be confused with malt sugar, non-diastatic malt powder, malt syrup, or malted milk powder (all of which are sugars), diastatic malt powder, is an enzyme made from malted barley or wheat that breaks down starches into simple sugars. In flour, diastatic malt serves to provide a steady supply of sugar, to drive fermentation during proofing and caramelization in the heat of the oven. 

Diastatic malt is usually added to commercial flours in the mill—it's often listed as “malted barley” or “barley flour" in the ingredients—in order to ensure a uniform, consistent amount from bag to bag. Adding a little extra diastatic malt to long-fermented doughs like this baguette ensures that there will always be enough sugar around to achieve dramatic and rapid browning during baking. 

A little bit of diastatic malt goes a long way, so buy it in small quantities if you can. And it loses enzymatic activity over time, especially when exposed to moisture or heat, so store it in a sealable container like a mason jar in a cool spot (or even in the freezer). 

FAQs

How do you make baguettes at home?

We have a step-by-step recipe for homemade baguettes that can be found here.

Do you need a baking stone or steel for baguettes?

For baking baguettes, we recommend getting a baking stone, not a steel. A baking steel will push too much heat into a baguette, which will cause it to burn before it bakes through.