Breadtopia Banneton Oval Bowl

Apparently, Ralph Waldo Emerson never actually said: “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” Nevertheless, we have set ourselves to the task of building a better mousetrap and we’re ready for the path beating to commence. Traditional rattan bread proofing baskets are great, but as with anything, they have their pluses and minuses. One of the primary issues that we hear about all the time is that wet dough can get stuck to them and when it does, it can be anywhere from somewhat to extremely difficult to clean it off. Aside from the annoyance, we’re all now very much more conscious of sanitary food preparation, both in the home and especially in a food industry context. For bakeries, restaurants, and other volume users of rattan baskets, another annoyance is the necessity to allow them to dry completely after use before you stack them together for storage in order to avoid the promotion of mold. And finally, one other issue with rattan proofing baskets that we’ve experienced more and more lately is availability. Nearly all rattan baskets are manufactured in Asia and especially for those of us in the US, just getting them here has become increasingly difficult of late. We set out to solve all of these problems by designing and locally (USA) manufacturing a whole new concept in bread proofing baskets. We’ve leveraged advanced materials engineering using an eco-friendly composite material made of 30% recycled maple wood fiber and 70% certified food-safe, BPA and phthalate free polypropylene. It’s like plastic in all the good ways, but none of the bad ways. It’s amazing stuff with a really nice, natural hand-feel. It’s rigid yet flexible, extremely durable, and should last forever. And when you get dough on it, you can just throw it in the top rack of your dishwasher and you’re good to go. We spent a good couple of years going back and forth with engineers and industrial designers getting the shape of the baskets just right. There were subtle limits in the interaction between the relief of the grooves and the angle of the walls. Too much relief and the walls flared too much. Not enough and we didn’t get the nice, cosmetic flour lines on our proofed dough. I have a file with a zillion images like this one. We tested an endless retinue of 3D-printed prototypes until we finally refined our way to designs that worked for both the manufacturing process and for proofing bread dough. Capacity Specs: Recipe dough weight: 1.5 – 2.5 lbs or 680 – 1130 grams Recipe flour volume: 3 – 4.5 cups Dimensions: 9L x 6W x 3H”