December 1, 2006 - 5:38pm
Baking Work Space
I'm wondering if anyone has any strong feelings on what is the best working surface for making and shaping bread. I'm going to be adding some additional counter space just for my bread making. I'm leaning towards a maple top, but am open to other suggestions.
Thanks in advance.
TomH
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Granite and maple are both excellent surfaces, but I have found that my Swanstone countertops work quite well for breadmaking. The Swanstone is fairly smooth but seems to have just enough "tooth" to grab the dough when I want to shape, roll, etc. It is also a food-grade commercial surface, can be cleaned with just about anything (including sandpaper - yikes!), and is temperature resistant to around 450 deg.F.
sPh
To increase my counter surface, I purchased a roll-away kitchen island with maple butcher block surface. Works great. But even better is the Roll 'n Pat plastic sheet that I use for dough work. Dough does not stick to it and it works fine for even the high hydration doughs. Clean-up is a breeze, Just wash the sheet under flowing water, dry and roll for storage of just leave on the table/counter top.
Willard Onellion
To increase my counter surface, I purchased a roll-away kitchen island with maple butcher block surface. Works great. But even better is the Roll 'n Pat plastic sheet that I use for dough work. Dough does not stick to it and it works fine for even the high hydration doughs. Clean-up is a breeze, Just wash the sheet under flowing water, dry and roll for storage or just leave on the table/counter top.
Willard Onellion
I think maple would be wonderful, and it would be fairly economical if you're just adding an addition to existing countertops. It's downside really is price. Oh and I second making it a little lower than your counters, especially if you hand knead.
My awesome guy built me an "baking island", and we ended up using oak, because we already had an oak table top (from a garage sale!). So far I like it a lot--it's not as soft as maple of course, but it has a nice feel for working. I guess I just like the feel of wood for kneading and benching. We thought we can always upgrade to maple in the future, but it seemed like good recycling to use something we already had--and it was a lot cheaper, of course :) If we every do see maple countertops at our local salvage place we'll for sure pick them up for the next kitchen project...