Recently Mary (BreadChick, TheSourDough) ask our little group what’s your favorite bread making tool in the kitchen.  Without blinking or thinking: my two hands.  I have a Kitchen-Aid, a bench scraper, a baking stone, a clear rising bucket, a digital scale (totally in love), a bread peel, and lots of motel shower caps to cover rising dough but the most useful and sensitive one has to be my own two hands.  My two hands are the only tool I have that can sense when dough fits the description in a book or tell me when a dough is ready to rise and then to shape because I’ve made it so many times.

Even so, I do love me all my gadgets.  But, I do require that a gadget actually do the job for which it says it will and do it well or I absolutely have no room for it. 

One of my very favorite “gadgets” to show off is this:

Yes, really, the teaspoon you use to stir your coffee. 

And how is this spoon a gadget . . .

like this.

I know . . .  but really this is the best ever gadget to peel thin skinned bumpy and irregular shaped ginger root there is.

But, today I want to tell you about a new “gadget” that I was a little leery about.  I first saw this in Sur La Table’s catalogue and it burned on me so strongly, I gave in last week and bought one.  I’m here to tell you it did a very fine job of scraping the sides of my 6 quart Kitchen-Aid mixing bowl two days ago when I mixed up the another batch of dough for the BBB recipe for this month. 

It’s not made by Kitchen-Aid and I have to think they are kicking themselves that somebody beat them to it.

You can see here it really does contact the sides of the bowl and actually scraps the bottom so you don’t have to stop the mixer and do that from time to time.

The BeaterBlade web site claims it can be used to fold egg whites into batter.  I haven’t tried that but I may give it a go.  We’ll see.  It does an excellent joy scraping the bottom and allowing through mixing of dough and batter.  Oh, and if you check out that link to BeaterBlade be sure to watch their side by side demo, it’s a marvel!

Another great advantage to this beater blade unlike my cast aluminum beater blade, this one is happy to go in the dishwasher!!!

And after you check out Beater Blade’s web site, check out Gretchen’s Kitchen Visit #5.  We really don’t “need” all we’d like to have.

And yes, tomorrow the Babes will be back in town.