Some things you just can't do without. I have had this bowl that I make bread in since before we moved to Oklahoma, I got it at a sidewalk sale at the Pfaltzgraff outlet. It's a very large bowl, and is the exact size needed for my bread recipe. It has straight sides, so the dough travels up as it proofs, not out. It is ceramic, so it retains heat which helps the bread to proof well. It's apparent that I had become dependant on the bowl. So imagine my dismay a couple of days ago when I went to use it and there was a huge crack up the side and a couple of small chips missing. At first I told myself, it won't matter, I'll just use it anyway, it's just a crack....



However, things are not the same. The bowl doesn't feel solid anymore. After using it today to make the rolls for Easter, I knew that the bowl was going to have to be put out pasture, trotted out to hold fruit on the table occaisionally, but not used for much more. I knew the bowl was going to have to be replaced fairly quickly, though, because I have been trying to bake more of our bread, and none of the other bowls I have are big enough.

So I searched the internet for a new bowl. That sounds a lot simpler than it is. If you type bowl into the google search engine, you get lots of listings, none really useful. Dough bowl returns an amount of listings of antique wooden bread bowls like you "would" not believe. Wood just doesn't seem hyugenic to me, although I guess the pioneers made it through all right. I wonder if any of them got food poisioning from not quite clean enough dough bowls.

No, the bowl had to be ceramic, it had to be fairly large, and it had to be in the right price range. I was not spending 40 or 50 dollars for a bowl. My search eventually led me to the Williams-Sonoma store. This bowl is perfect. NAYY. Just really happy the search for the perfect bowl is over. I guess I won't be making sour dough bread tomorrow, but the new bowl should be here pretty soon. I probably should have ordered two of them, LOL.