Hotel Shower Caps Are Incredibly Useful for Baking Bread
I don’t take towels and robes from hotels, but I do try to bring all the crappy disposable shower caps with me. Although they will never see the inside of my bathroom, they are guaranteed to be used in my kitchen. You see, I use them to bake bread . The humble plastic shower cap is surprisingly useful for proofing dough .
Like many important life skills, I learned this trick from The Great British Bake Off . During a bread baking competition, one of the contestants unpacks a tiny envelope and comments about how they steal shower caps from hotels to proof their bread. They put the plastic lid on the bowl of freshly kneaded dough and moved on.
Review pitfalls
After this episode, I was both angry that I hadn’t done it yet and excited that I would be staying at the hotel. Even though it’s just one step in the bread-making process, significant rise during proofing can make a huge difference to the finished loaf. Optimizing this step would be huge.
Proofing is when you leave the raw dough in a warm place for an extended period of time, usually a couple of hours, to allow the yeast to release gas and allow the dough to rise. Bread recipes usually call for covering the bowl of dough with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel. For me these have always been good methods, but there are pitfalls. Plastic wrap does not adhere well to metal, plastic or wooden bowls and may slide off or get caught in the bowl. Tea towels will work, but they are porous and may be drafty. Either scenario could result in longer wait times or, worse, a dry film on the dough that can ruin the texture and make it difficult to rise.
Hotel shower caps make proofing dough easier
The way hotel shower caps are designed to rest on your skull is also ideal for placing over the edges of bowls. It’s essentially a plastic bag with an elastic ring around the opening. The elastic stretches easily to grip bowls 12 inches in diameter and smaller, and once it’s tightened in place, it won’t budge.
The plastic comb retains heat and creates a little extra headroom in case the dough rises unexpectedly high. This will keep the batter from sticking to the plastic and will keep your shower cap clean so you can use it forever (or until it falls apart).
If you’re baking once or twice this winter, you might not care about longer proofing times, but if you’re making loaves more often this winter or baking for friends and family, wear a shower cap to speed up the proofing. much less fussy. So next time you stay at a hotel, be sure to check the bathroom for your next kitchen tool.