bread "boards"?

I don't use silicone boards at all, as they get small scratches that bacteria can gather in, whereas wooded boards "heal", or are said to. I'm down to owning just one wooden board and it is a little small for the job. Presently I knead on a big smooth tile left over from when I had my floor done five years ago. They sell them at flooring stores for little money. Personally, my requirement is that whatever board I pick, it is big enough to take rolling out the dough for pie crusts or for a pizza.

Opinions on all this will vary..

I just remembered - my all time favorite was a pretty large piece of butcher block that was in the kitchen in our Venice house. Butcher block used to be not all that expensive, say in the eighties, but last time I looked it was fairly costly.

And it's probably not real butcher board. The real thing is made up of small blocks, with the end grain being the working surface so as not to dull your knives. Most "butcher board" today is just a bunch of sticks glued together and planed as one piece.

Mine was in our house when we bought it in the mid seventies. We remodeled at some point and I kept it as a loose thick board, which I took with me when we moved. One day the thing just broke; by then I figure it was at least 40 years old.

I've been baking bread for forty years.
(yes. it's really WELL done...... .... .) Hah. Ha.

Anyway.
I used a wooden bread board for the first thirty years or so and then, between apartments and houses and marriages, it disappeared. :-(
It was a good board. Easy to keep clean (What's so hard about washing with hot soapy water, rising well and letting it dry completely before putting it away?) and, this is important, heavy enough not too move around when you are kneading the dough.

--I do have one rule for cutting boards vs bread boards. I never cut anything on a bread board.

Cutting boards, especially those used for meat, need a salt and lemon juice rub every week and food grade mineral oil
applied once a year. I miss that bread board.
=
Sigh.
Ten years pass. I decide to make bread again. I try using the plastic cutting board I've had for awhile. No good. It won't stay put as you lean into it even with a towel under it. (And the towel get flour packed in it and ..... phhhfffftt. Hopeless)

So, now I clean the kitchen counter really well and knead the dough right on it. Quick, easy and all I have to do sweep the extra flour off into the wastebasket. And clean the counter really well.

Here's the loaves I made today:
1 oatmeal whole wheat
1 honey whole wheat
1 raisin whole wheat


I had a slice of the raisin, toasted, with a cappuccino as I typed this.

Joe(e-z bake ovens forever)Nation

Agree all the way. I'd use my present counter except there's no room. (I put my big tile over the sink, see...

Osso's right about bread boards, and it applies to cutting boads, too. The various forms of "plastic" boards were all the rage about 20 years ago, and proponents, on no very good basis at all, claimed they were more hygienic. Not so. As she has pointed out, detritus can collect in pits, gouges and scorings from knives, and breed bacteria. Wood contains naturally occuring antibodies, 'cause trees can get sick, too. You want wood. It would be good to use some tung oil on a new, being careful to wipe off the excess right away. Let it stand for a couple of days and then wipe vegetable oil on it, wiping off the excess. Let that stand for a couple of days, and repeat. If you could get oil from the Neem tree, that would be better, but i don't know if you can get that outside India. However, if you're inside India, why to you claim to live in New Mexico?

One of my wooden boards, a birthday present from a friend who was a pan am stewardess oft landing in hawaii (trying to remember what that board was made of), met the kiss of death when I asked my early teen niece and her father to smash the chocolate bits. I forget just what chocolate bits. See, I had this good mallet for, mm, tenderizing beef and similar projects, and they both hit the chocolate with the mallet with great vigor... split board.

Did I wash the mallet? sure, in soap and water routinely. It too met the kiss of death, here in Abq, as an elderly mallet.

I'm pretty sure you can get neem oil in the US, dunno about NM, but my guess is yes.

I was never the expert how-to-fix-your-tree's problem person in any firm I was with.

Flour scrapers are a beneficence to man, and woman, keeping us from major wet flour disasters. I sometimes use this sexy stainless steel thing, sort of like a curling wave, but the best tool I have is a half circle plastic thing we used to get when we ordered very large press on letters for our gallery shows.. now I wished I'd saved more than one. I suppose some hardware store scrapers could be good too.

Try it keep it clean please.

I prefer a glass "board" and run them through the dishwasher to store in the fridge.

I think I was a bread-making machine in a previous life.

Glass, huh, is it thick?

... Thinking of one wet bread recipe, I forget which, that involves slapping the dough, whap! whap! whap! from on high. It's in the italian bread book I usually mention, Carol Field. I always give up and add more flour, bad girl. But whapping dough is invigorating.

I use my granite countertop for kneading, and funnily enough, just made four loaves yesterday. Love homemade bread!

This made me think--and i'd not thought of it in years and years and years--my grandmother kept a hemmed square of heavy linen, aboub the size of the table in the kitchen, which she used for kneading bread dough, for rolling out egg noodles, pie crust, other forms of pastry. What made me think of it is that she kept that linen in the fridge, too.

Yup. You've got to have a pastry cloth and a marble rolling pin to make really good pie crust. Both go in the fridge at least overnight to get really cold. The cold keeps the cut-up lard (or the butter, if the in-laws are coming) hard within the dough.
Think little beads of Crisco.
When you put the pie in the oven, those beads melt into the crust, making thousands of caves and nooks and crannies, the result of which is the flakiest thing on earth.

Joe(until Sara Palin was heard from)Nation

we were just talking about keeping the butter cold in the dough on the weekend - while we were having a very important discussion about rolling pins

somewhere in the house, I've got a fancy-dancy rolling pin that you put ice into - to keep the butter from warming up as you're rolling out pastry

Hmmm, I've got a glass rolling pin (like a rolling pin shaped bottle). I've never used it -- it's a dust magnet decoration currently stuffed with chilli peppers. Do you suppose I could put ice cubes in it? Why not, eh?

Don't trust me with a glass rolling pin. Ooopsie..

Well, the truth is that I've never heard of them, though recipes often mention wine bottles.

So, are glass rolling pins available at sur la table?

We got a glass drink pitcher, with a rolling pin type hollow glass ice thingy for keeping the liquid cold, as a wedding present : We still have them.

So I'm feelin' lucky punk and as likely to bake bread as make pizza bases.