This clever product has made baking everyday loaves of sourdough bread for my family even easier. Being able to mix the dough, let it ferment & rise, and bake a single loaf in one easy-to-clean container makes it practically effortless to make a loaf of really tasty bread several times a week. It's the perfect size for the loaves produced by the recipes in my go-to bread baking book, Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.
Cleanup is easy: just toss it in the dishwasher. Dried on bits of dough and even bits of melted cheese that may leak out from our family favourite, cheddar/jalapeno bread, wash out in the DW. It's easy to store in a drawer.
It took a few tries to figure out how to get a nice crust and maximum oven spring. When shaping the loaf prior to rising, I make sure there's enough surface tension on the dough so it holds its shape. To get a "football" shaped loaf, close the top during the rise and for the first 25 min of baking. Placing the Lekue on top of a preheated pizza stone in the oven, baking at 430 degrees (the maximum rating for the silicone) with the top closed for 25 min and then open for the final 20 min of baking produces a beautiful, tasty, dark golden crust and a soft but chewy inner crumb for sourdough that has been allowed to rise slowly (15+ hours) in the refrigerator, then an additional 1-2 hour rise at room temperature.
For novices: the recipes in the enclosed booklet aren't very good. You'll find lots of bread recipes on line that produce better results. This Lekue is the right size for loaves that contain about 800-900 g of dough (about 4 cups of flour and 1 1/2 cups water). Have fun!

A basic bread recipe from a cookbook I had turned out so great as my first load with this. The crust would have been darker if I had used butter on top before I baked it. As recipe indicated. It was so great to have everything in the bowel- ingredients to rising to baking- instead of mixing and transferring.
I might get rid of my box breadmaker as a result.

I tried sourdough bread during the covid lockdown in 2020 and 2021... the results were never what i was looking for... misshaped loaves, loaves that flattened out, etc. I ultimately reverted to the trusty lodge Dutch oven for no knead bread, but secretly wanted to perfect a sourdough loaf (having grown up in the SF Bay Area and having access to great sourdough bread in the grocery. So, I happen to see a YouTube video with the Lekue bread maker and I popped over to Amazon to check it out... not too pricey, I guess I'll give it a try. While I was in the process of making a new started, I tried a couple of yeast loaves, and was disappointed in the results. (In my impatience, I did not let it rise long enough).

Then, my starter came alive and was bubbling furiously, so I decided to give a 500 gram loaf a try (150 grams starter, 250 grams water, 25 grams olive oil - all mixed together first, then 500 grams of bread flour and 10 grams of salt - all mixed in the Lekue (which I had placed in a larger bowl for rigidity) and started the bulk rise. A couple of pull and turns in the Lekue, and slight forming of a ball, then the final rise, close the Lekue, place on a quarter sheet pan and into a 400 degree over for 40 minutes, then remove from Lekue and 20 minutes at 400 for final browning.

An untouched photo is attached. The flavor was remarkable. This device makes me look like the baker I aspire to be!

This was so easy to use! I mixed, proofed, and baked in this silicone baker!

I've been baking 2 loaves using the Tartine method (starting with 1000 grams of various flours, 70ish% hydration and levain) for about 3 months now. I started with boules in the Le Creuset Dutch oven and moved to boules and oval loaves on a marble pizza stone with a roasting pan lid and lava rock under the stone and lid to create steam. All in pursuit of the perfect crumb and oven spring. The results were widely varied, with the most disappointment in oven spring. Also, I put lots of fillings in my loaves, like the ones pictured here - date/pecan and black sesame seed/herb. It's not uncommon for me to have to cool down the Le Creuset between loaves to scrub baked on fruit off of it between loaves, which means reheating the oven for up to an hour again at high temp to bake the 2nd loaf.

I bought the Lekue silicone baker on a whim, because it was cheap and clean up promised to be a breeze.

The first 2 weekends baking with it, I did one loaf in the Lekue and another in the Dutch oven. Last weekend I even did another oval loaf on the clay baker.

I liked the Lekue, but the crumb was tight, like the loaf was trying to expand, but was getting squished into being too tight. The loaves turned out like footballs with pointy ends.

This weekend I was determined to find a solution to the Lekue not being quite big enough for me loaves to fully spring. I've tried to capture it in photos.

I needed the Lekue to be bigger, which means I didn't want to latch it, so the bread could rise, but I also needed it to be covered, so the steam could do its thing. I left the Lekue unlatched and wrapped it in a Silpat, using metal clips to seal the ends of the Silpat where they came together above the top of the Lekue. I also a clip on each side to better deal in the steam. The clips I used were these Italian paper clips I bought years ago somewhere. I imagine regular paper clips might work, but the ones I used are tough, so I knew they wouldn't pop off. In this way, I artificially made the Lekue bigger.

And it worked! Both loaves expanded beautifully and produced loaves that rose bigger and had a looser crumb than they would have been in the latched Lekue.

I baked the loaves, "clipped in," for 20 minutes at 425F. Then I removed the whole thing from the oven and popped off the clips, removed the Silpat and returned the unpatched Lekue to the 425 oven for another 20 minutes. Then I pulled out the bread, removed it from the Lekue and placed it back in the oven on the racks for another 5-10 minutes to ensure a crispy crust.

I love the shape of the bigger loaves. They don't have weird pointy ends and the slices are the perfect size for morning toast or the amazing late summer BLT's we are enjoying for dinner at the moment.

I'm putting away the Le Creuset and storing my boule bannetons for the time being. Finally after months of experimentation, I've found a perfect solution for my weekend sourdough baking needs.

I particularly love the super easy cleanup - just throw the Lekue in the dishwasher. And I also love that the bannetons for standard oval loaves (which I use with the Lekue) fit much more easily in my always packed fridge than the boule bannetons.

I am giving the Lekue 4 stars, because it's a tad too small for each of the 2 loaves recipe that the Tartine method makes. Please, please, please Lekue... make a bigger option!