What is a 'dough spatula'?
I got a new baking book for Christmas; in it, I found the following sentence:
[To bake this bread] you will need the following kitchen tools: a digital scale for metric measures, a small scoop for flour, a thermometer, a wide bowl for mixing, a rubber spatula, a dough spatula, and a bench knife
(emphasis mine)
What is a dough spatula and how does it differ from a rubber spatula? What do I look for when I go to the store? Google shows me many products, all of which look entirely different from one another.
ETA: The first mention I see of it indicates I use it to... clean my hands? "Use a dough spatula to clean the clumps [of flour and water] off your hands and tidy the inside of the bowl"
Best Answer
My first thoughts are this which is actually a scraper but I wouldn't use a metal scraper in a bowl. Being flexible plastic, it flexes and molds itself to the inside of a bowl and allows easy removal of dough.
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Quick Answer about "What is a 'dough spatula'?"
Its wide, flat surface is similar to a mini version of our giant spatula, which makes it a handy tool for transferring fragile doughs to a sheet pan or shaped bagels into boiling water. And it can even be used to scrape sticky doughs out of bowls.What is a dough spatula?
Use it to loosen pastries, transfer cookies or biscuits, lift a fragile cake layer, or divide and scoop sifted flour from wax paper into a mixing bowl. You can even turn a fragile fish fillet on the grill.What is a dough scraper used for?
A bench scraper, sometimes also called a bench knife, a dough scraper, or any number of other variations, is a flat, rectangular piece of steel with a handle along one edge. It's a sort of wide, dull knife that bakers use to divide, portion, scoop and transfer hunks of dough from one place to another.What is a Subject? English Grammar for Beginners | Basic English | ESL
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Answer 2
Hmmm. Given that the cookbook calls for both a "dough spatula" and a "bench knife," I suspect that the book is referring to what I would call a "spatula" and a "dough scraper." I suspect they're using the term "dough spatula" to differentiate between the spatula one would use to flip a pancake from the spatula that one would use to stir cake batter. King Arthur flour offers a good example of the latter:
I wouldn't call it essential, but I do often use this kind of spatula when I'm making bread dough. It's really most useful for scraping down the side of my stand mixer bowl and extracting the finished dough from the mixer's bowl. In both cases, a plastic pastry scraper would work just as well but the spatula has the advantage of keeping your hands safely out of the mixer while the dough hook is still attached.
Of course, if you're kneading by hand, then this kind of spatula is minimally useful.
Answer 3
You are quoting from the Tartine Bread book (I have it also) and the dough spatula is much different than a bench scraper. It is the flat white device pictured in the first answer. It is shown on p. 51 of the Tartine book.
I have another handled spatula that I use to stir the initial mixture of flour and leaven and water, and only get in with my clean bare hands when it's time to mix in the salt and prepare for the first bulk rise.
The dough spatula makes scraping the sides of the mixing bowl much easier.
Answer 4
I've been baking bread for about 15 years. In all that time, I can say without a doubt that I've never heard of anything called a "dough spatula".
If you include the directions that discuss its usage, I might be able to figure it out. I suspect it's just a bowl scraper.
But dough spatula? What on earth?
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