Essentials: Bread Baking

Notice I didn’t title this “Bread Making”. The components you need to make bread are different for every recipe. Some require heating ingredients, some just require mixing and kneading. For this post, I am only going to talk about pans.

There are as many different types of bread pans on the market as there are bread recipes.

The Essentials

For bare bones basic bread baking, you need regular sized bread pans. These are 8½ x 4½ x 2½. You can make everything from banana bread to Oatmeal Honey Whole Wheat Bread with these pans.

For things like cornbread, you need a 9x9x2 square pan. I have also used an 8″ round cake pan.

For breads like French Bread, dinner rolls, biscuits, and other such breads, you need a sheet pan.

The Extras

When I make bread, I use it for our daily sandwiches and toast. So, I use a longer bread pan, and make 1½ of my recipe. This pan is 12 x 4½ x 2½.

There are tons of different cornbread pans. This is just one of the cast iron options. My kids love it when I serve cornbread in the shape of little corncobs, but it’s a lot more work. Not that more work is bad, I’m just pre-warning you.

I use a special French bread pan. This saves me from having to sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal, and makes the bread crusty all the way around. I love it.

I also have this baugette pan. It makes 3 smaller, tighter loaves than the French bread pan.

Here is a min-loaf pan. These four loaves equal one regular sized loaf.

To make rolls you can use a sheet pan (like above) or a round cake pan. I know some people who use muffin pans for rolls as well.

Like I said, there are as many different kinds of bread pans as there are kinds of breads. However, what you see here is all that I have in my collection so far, and I have yet to come across a recipe where I need any other kind of specialty bread pan. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It just means that it hasn’t happened yet.