Baking and Pastry Equipment - Introduction

Much of a baker’s art and craft involves simple tools. 

Learning to be a skilled baker requires developing a great deal of manual skill using these tools. For example, a pastry bag is nothing more than a cone-shaped piece of fabric or plastic, open at both ends. Although its construction is simple and it requires no operating manual, hours of practice are required to become skilled at using a pastry bag for decorative work.

At the other extreme are large machines such as floor-model mixers, ovens of many types, and dough-handling equipment such as molders, dividers, and sheeters. Of these, perhaps only ovens are essential to a baker’s work. The other items are important laborsaving devices that enable the worker to produce goods in large quantities with greater speed. Without them, much of the work of a bakeshop would not be economically feasible.

The next posts are an outline of the most important pieces of equipment used by bakers and pastry chefs, from large equipment to containers and molds to hand tools. Learning to use these tools is the subject of much of this blog.