I was so confused when at the very beginning of my bread baking journey I was trying to figure out which lame will help me to get a beautiful open ear. And for sure there is a combination of factors that can make you the happiest person in the world by getting an open crumb and a sharp ear. But a good sharp bread lame that fits your hand comfortably is also very important. Cause it will let you to perform a firm confident movement for the dough scoring.
That's why I decided to share with you my collection of lames and describe why and when I prefer to use them ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
This is the first lame that I bought and it still remains my number one. You can see it in many of my highlights about dough scoring. It has a very comfortable handle, the blade is curved a little bit, just as much as I like. It helps to create a very sharp angle of a cut on bread dough. And the blade is attached to the handle in such a way that it doesn't allow to cut the dough too deep, with such a scoring an ear appears to be quite elegant.
It also has a great box for keeping it and the way of changing blades is very safe here.
Another type of a bread lame is a typical bread lame which is easy to use, it has a comfortable wooden handle. It's a typical lame that is sold by many internet stores. I have several versions. One lame goes with a safety glove to protect your hands during blade changing. I really love this set, it's really comfortable.
The blade is more curved, I know that many bakers love it, but I personally very often do a too deep scoring with this lame.
Another type that I have is a ufo lame, one is by Wiremonkey. It's a classic ufo lame of a good quality, very beautiful. I use it only for scoring different patterns on round breads or some decorative patterns on batards. I don't like to use it for a regular ear scoring, cause it's very small and it's difficult for me to do a sharp-angle scoring. It lays in my hand in such a way, that sometimes I touch the dough with my hand while doing a scoring and it's not so comfortable for me. But it's really good while doing a straight scoring in the middle of a batard, so again many bakers love it.
Once I also bought another ufo lame, it also looks pretty, almost no difference in design with a wiremonkey, but it's a little bit wider, bigger, so when I put the blade inside of two round wooden parts, I got a smaller part of a blade outside for scoring. So this type of lame I use only to do some patterns, not a sharp long scoring for tartine bread for example.
If to speak about blades, I don't have any preferences, I used some good Japanese blades and absolutely no name blades, they all were the same and scored the dough perfectly. In my climate they just start to rust earlier than become dull, so I change it almost every 20 bakes.
