Rubbermaid Easy Find Lids 14-Cup Food Storage Containers (2-Pack)
These are my go-to containers for making levain. Flour Water Salt Yeast wants a 6-quart commercial restaurant container, and these do the same job in a fraction of the space. If your fridge is already full, buy these instead.
Buy NowWhy it earns its place
The Flour Water Salt Yeast book recommends a 6-quart commercial restaurant container for both levain and dough, but they are difficult to find and expensive so I use these Rubbermaid Easy Find Lids 14-cup containers. They take up far less space on the counter and in the fridge, the lids snap on securely (no more plastic wrap or loose covers), and they're easy to stack or tuck away when not in use.
Fourteen cups is 3.5 quarts, which sounds like a downgrade from six and isn't. A levain build only needs room to roughly double, and the squat square shape gives you a wide surface to watch it dome and a flat lid you can stack something else on top of.
If your kitchen is short on counter and fridge real estate (or you just prefer less bulk), these are a practical, budget-friendly upgrade over the larger commercial restaurant container.
How I actually use it
I use one of these for building and storing my levain, then mix the actual dough in an OXO Good Grips 5-Quart Mixing Bowl. It's a simpler, more space-efficient setup that still works perfectly with the methods in the book.
Build the levain straight in the container on the scale — tare, flour, tare, water, tare, starter. Snap the lid on, leave it on the counter overnight, and mix the dough in the morning when it's domed and smells sharp.
Keep the second one clean and empty. You'll want it the moment the first is in use, and having to wash a container while a levain is peaking is the kind of small annoyance that ruins a bake day.
Specs
- Brand
- Rubbermaid
- Capacity
- 14 cups (3.5 qt / 3.3 L)
- Quantity
- 2 containers, 2 lids
What to know before you buy
Run the lids through a hot dishwasher cycle often enough and the corners warp — mine live on the top rack for exactly that reason.
They snap, but they don't seal. Fine for levain, fine for anything you're carrying flat, not fine for soup. Not airtight.
And they stain. Keep them for flour-and-water work and put the spaghetti somewhere else.
What else I considered
The 6-quart Cambro is the container the book actually names, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's clear, it's tough, and it has litre markings printed up the side that make a levain build easy to eyeball. It's also enormous. A 6-quart tub takes a whole shelf of a home fridge and it doesn't stack with anything, and the lid is a separate purchase on most listings. For two loaves a week in a normal kitchen, the 14-cup wins on the only thing that mattered to me — where it goes when I'm done with it.