What kind of salt do bakers like to use?
Originally, CL recipes called for the use of sea salt or kosher salt preferentially. We follow in the footsteps of professional and serious home bread bakers who prize these salts for the noticeable difference they lend to flavor and texture. Additionally, for their ease of ingredient incorporation.
In fact, for bread, salt affects flavor, fermentation, and gluten strength. And the general guidelines look something like this:
- For reliability and flavor: Fine sea salt or kosher salt, by weight
- For general baking: Iodized salt works fine, especially if you're not baking artisan-style bread. (Can work just fine in our Sandwich Loaves.)
- For artisan or sourdough bread: Kosher or fine sea salt is ideal.
Although we stand by our recommendation for sea salt or kosher salt, especially for artisan or sourdough bread, always measured by weight, we are now allowing the use of iodized salt as well.
Why are we now adding iodized salt as an option? There is a growing public health concern around reduced dietary iodine intake (see this November 2024 Economist article). Using iodized salt in our loaves is a simple way to help address this in a population that often needs robust nutritional support.
It’s not a requirement — baker preference always comes first — but we’ll gradually add iodized salt as a suggested option in our formulas. It takes us a bit of time to update and refresh our library of recipes, but in the meantime, please know that using "iodized sea salt" is not only permitted, it could even be considered a public service!
Always weigh your salt for accuracy: Volume measurements are unreliable as salt comes in multiple grain formats and densities. So regardless of the salt you choose - Kosher, sea salt or iodized sea salt, always weigh out the quantity for accuracy.