Five bowls. Realistically, two.
They look essentially as they did new
Equipment review
Stainless mixing bowls
Wildone · stainless steel · five nesting bowls with lids
By Steven · Updated September 2026
What matters is having more than one bowl, not which bowls they are.
Buy them for the two bowls you will actually use and treat the rest as a bonus. Weigh into a small bowl and tip into the big one, never the other way round. Ignore the graters.
BakeClass Snapshot
- Cost
- Mid range
- Longevity
- Buy once
- Learning curve
- Immediate
- Best for
- Anyone mixing by hand
Buy them for the two bowls you will actually use and treat the rest as a bonus.
Do I actually need one?
Yes.You need bowls, and you need more than one. That second part is the bit worth explaining. Weigh your water into the big bowl, then tip flour straight in after it and overshoot, and you cannot take the excess back out - it is already wet. Weigh the flour into a smaller bowl first and tip in what you need, and an overshoot costs you nothing. One large bowl to work in, one or two small ones to weigh into, is the whole system.
What it does, and why this one
The largest bowl is where the dough gets mixed and where it bulk ferments. The small ones are staging: flour, salt, starter or yeast weighed out separately so nothing goes irretrievably into the wet mix by accident. The lids turn the big bowl into a fermentation vessel with no clingfilm or tea towel needed.
Stainless rather than glass or plastic: it does not stain, does not hold smells, does not chip, and is light enough to lift a full bowl of dough one-handed. The set nests, so five bowls take up little more room than the largest. The lids are the sourdough-specific advantage - a sealed bowl for bulk ferment means no clingfilm and no tea towel drying the surface of the dough. The non-slip silicone base matters more than it sounds when you are doing stretch and folds with one hand and holding nothing with the other.
Pros and cons
What works
- Stainless takes years of use without denting, staining or rusting
- Nests down to almost nothing
- Lids replace clingfilm entirely for bulk fermentation
- Non-slip base holds the bowl still one-handed
What does not
- Five bowls, and realistically you will use two for baking
- The three grater attachments do nothing an ordinary grater does not
- Flat lids, so a large bulk ferment can rise into the underside and stick
- Lids are officially hand wash only
My experience
No dents, no rust, no marking of any kind - they look essentially as they did new. I bulk ferment in the largest bowl with the lid on and it has replaced clingfilm completely, with the one caveat about a big batch reaching the lid. I do not miss being able to see the dough through the side, incidentally. You learn roughly how long a bulk ferment takes in your kitchen, and then you lift the lid and look rather than watching it through glass every five minutes. The non-slip base has only ever struggled with a really stiff dough, where I have wrapped a damp tea towel round the base to hold it - at normal hydration it stays put fine.
Steven, BakeClass
Alternatives
Any large bowl plus a couple of small ones will do the job. Glass lets you see the dough rise, which some people like, but it is heavier and it breaks. What matters is having more than one bowl, not which bowls they are.
Will you outgrow it?
No. Stainless bowls are a once-in-a-lifetime purchase, and the ones you do not use now may find a job later.