The tools, flour, and hardware I actually use — no filler, no affiliate-farm listicles. Every product here earns its place. If it's on this page, it's in my kitchen.
Flour
King Arthur Organic Unbleached Whole Wheat Flour — my starter's food, day one to forever. Clean, unbromated, and the whole grain gives the wild yeast something to grip. Widely available.
King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour — the workhorse for every dough on this site. Higher protein than all-purpose (~12.7%), which gives sourdough the structure to hold air. Also available as an organic version.
King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour — for genuine wheat loaves like Country Wheat Sourdough, which uses 100 g of it in the bowl.
Water
Filtered or bottled. Tap water with chlorine can slow or kill wild yeast, especially when you're starting a new starter. A Brita pitcher is fine.
Kitchen tools
A good kitchen scale. Sourdough is weighed, not measured. Any digital scale that reads to 1 g is fine. OXO, Escali, and MyWeigh all work.
Danish dough whisk. The best tool for mixing a wet dough without gumming up. About $15 anywhere.
Bench scraper. For handling dough, dividing, cleaning up. A metal one lasts forever.
Quart glass jar with a loose lid. For your starter. Wide mouth so you can stir. Not airtight — the CO₂ needs somewhere to go. A Weck jar or a plain Mason with the lid resting on top both work.
Instant-read thermometer. For checking dough temp during bulk and internal temp when the bread comes out of the oven. A Thermapen if you want the best; a $15 model works too.
Baking hardware
Cast iron Dutch oven, 5–7 quart, with a lid. The single most important piece of equipment for the loaves on this site. Lodge for value; Le Creuset or Staub if you want an heirloom. Preheat it empty at 500°F for 45 minutes before every boule.
Banneton or proofing basket. Round or oval, rice-floured for the final proof. A cane 9-inch banneton fits most of the boules here. If you'd rather use a bowl lined with a floured tea towel, that works too.
Bread lame or razor blade. For scoring. A dedicated lame gives you the best control; a razor blade taped to a chopstick is the DIY version and works fine.
Parchment paper. Cut a piece long enough to lift the dough into the Dutch oven with the sides as handles.
Pullman pan, 9-inch, with a lid. Only if you want to make pan loaves — sweet doughs like Honey Oat, Cinnamon Raisin, and Apple Cinnamon all have Pullman variants sized to a 9-inch pan.
Temperature control and starter automation
If your kitchen runs cold (below 68°F), fermentation slows down and gets less predictable. Two appliances actually earn their price here, and I own both. They solve two different problems.
Brod & Taylor Sourdough Home — a temperature-controlled countertop box that holds your starter jar at a precise setpoint, anywhere from 41°F to 122°F, heating or cooling to get there. About $99–$150 depending on where you buy it. This is what I use to hold my starter at 73–78°F year-round. It's not a proofing box — too small for dough — it's specifically for your starter jar. Worth it if you bake weekly and your kitchen is cold, or if you want fermentation timing to stay steady across the seasons. Registering it extends the warranty from one year to three.
King Arthur Sourdough Sidekick — an automated starter feeder that dispenses flour and water into a glass crock on a schedule you set, and stirs it for you. $179.99, with a one-year limited warranty. I use it alongside the Sourdough Home — the Sidekick handles the feeding, the Sourdough Home handles the temperature. Together they take my starter's day-to-day maintenance off my plate almost entirely, which matters when energy is limited.
The two are complements, not competitors. The Sidekick automates the feeding; it reads room temperature and adjusts its schedule, but it doesn't heat or cool anything. If temperature is your real problem, the Sourdough Home is the tool for that, and it's the cheaper of the two. If you're feeding once a week and don't mind doing it by hand, you don't need the Sidekick at all. If you want maintenance handled on a schedule so you can put your attention on the bake itself, it's a real time-saver.
Honest notes from using it: it's noisier than I expected — the paddle runs for about 30 seconds every couple of hours, and you hear it. The app is mostly for monitoring and notifications; real configuration happens on the device, so there's a learning curve. The crock and lid are hand-wash only. Auto mode wants an exact 15 g of starter to begin a cycle, and its minimum batch sizes for bakes several days out can leave you with more discard than feeding by hand would. Coarse rye can clump in the hopper. None of those are dealbreakers for me, but they're worth knowing before you spend $180.
My verdict on the Sidekick: worth it if you bake weekly or more and want the maintenance automated. If you bake occasionally, a jar, a fridge, and a weekly reminder do the same job for free.
Affiliate note
Links on this page currently go directly to King Arthur, Amazon, or the manufacturer. They are not affiliate links yet. When I set up affiliate tracking, I'll disclose it right here and update the links. In the meantime, if you buy something I recommend, I recommended it because I use it or because I've done the homework — not because it pays me.
Where to go next
New to all of this? Start with the starter guide and the Classic Boule. You need less of this list than you think — a scale, a jar, a Dutch oven, and flour will get you a very good loaf.