Out of the many tools in a bakery, the bench scraper is one of our favorites. This is just a rectangular piece of stainless steel with a handle, but is an incredible baking tool for many purposes, including cutting cold butter to measure for your recipe, slicing cinnamon roll dough into the perfect shape before baking in the oven or creating that perfect triangle shape.
Here you will see that in the Blue Flour Bakery kitchen, we are using the bench scraper as a cutter to shape our chocolate chip scones into triangles. We can use the same tool to lift the cut scones onto our sheet pan prior to baking. Once you are finished baking, you can use it to get every bit of dough or flour off your work surface prior to wiping it down.
Although we like our stainless steel bench scraper for cutting, we prefer our plastic scraper — which will mold into the shape of our mixing bowls — to get every morsel of batter out. Looking for the best bench scraper? Read these reviews on Cook’s Illustrated for their advice, and happy slicing!