It’s January 2nd and I have already baked a sourdough bread which I made dough for it a day before in an evening. I have used 15 % wholegrain spelt flour, 8 % rye flour, 55 % all-purpose flour and 22 % organic wheat flour – this amounted to 600 g of flour and I’ve used 75 % hydration. I usually use only organic types of flour but there were almost none of it at home except of 120 g of wheat flour. The result was fantastic and you can see it on photos of this post.

Many factors contribute to a successful bake and one of them is a baking vessel. When I started baking bread I used ordinary baking tray which gave OK results but my loafs tended to turn into a balloon. Bottom of bread has risen just as much as the upper half of the bread. It was cool to see my shaping skills were good but I wanted a bread with almost flat bottom and with cracks where scoring was made. Next I bought myself a dutch oven but still I wasn’t satisfied. First of all dutch oven is quite heavy and you need to be very careful not to burn yourself on numerous occasions – when taking in and out of hot oven, placing the dough inside. Dutch oven also produced pale crust which drove me nuts sometimes.

But then I have bought a pizza steel which produces the best results for me. It’s the most practical of the three because I only have to put it on oven racks before turning it on and once it’s hot enough I only have to open the oven door and slide the dough from the peel onto the pizza steel. No need to handle very hot objects.

Since buying it 2 months ago I’ve also been baking pizzas regularly – it’s called “pizza” steel after all. But after 5 or 6 pizzas my pizza shaping skills haven’t improved much and they still need a lot of practicing.

I have bought it from official website form Danmark when it cost less and using a coupon from sourdough-related book I managed to get free shipping.