February 10, 2016 - 12:52am
is it possible to bake bread on stove top alone?
hi,
My little oven does not heat very well, and I really want to preserve energy and not preheat my oven for too long. But I get the idea that to have a good oven spring, the baking temperature needs to be very high from the start. Thinking that stove top can heat very fast, I'm contemplating baking bread on stove top along, inside a large dutch oven.
Is this a good idea to get oven spring?
thanks
Liming
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I suggest you try English Muffins. They are baked on a griddle.
It's certainly possible to bake decent bread on a campfire, so while I've ever tried on the stovetop, I'm inclined to think it can be done, probably with limitations though.
I go to Taiwan quite often and have no oven available. I have a recipe for a fried bread originating in India that uses yoghurt. You can find many bhatura recipes on the internet by searching bhatura. I will send along my recipe separately.
This is the book I got the bhatura recipe from. http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Step---Step-Guide-Baking/dp/1844767566/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455123731&sr=1-7&keywords=baking+bread+christin...
I have altered it somewhat. For example it calls for 1/2 inch of oil. I use enough just to brown the bread.
The recipe ingredients
1 tsp of instant yeast
2 tsp sugar (or honeym molasses, agave, etc)
240 ml lukewarm water
400 gr all-purpose flour
100 gr of semolina flour (I have difficulty finding this in Taiwan. Used only all-purpose & was fine)
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter or ghee
4 tbsp of plain yoghurt
oil for frying
Procedures
mix sugar, yeast & water in small bowl
Mix flour in large bowl & stir in salt. Rub in small chunks of butter.
Add the yeast mixture & yoghurt to the flour. (I have lately been adding 1 egg at this point)
Knead dough (on work surface - I use the bowl)
Place dough in a lightly oiled container & cover for about 1 hour til "doubled" in size.
The book says turn out dough to work surface & punch down. Divide into about 15 pieces-roll into a ball and flatten with hand. I turn out & flatten with hand then use a rolling pin. Roll to about 1/4 inch. I have a circular (about 2 1/2 inch dia) cutting tool that I use. I Taiwan I roll them.
Fry in lightly oiled pan (you can deep fry if you wish) until browned to your liking. You will get a good rise in the dough while being fried.
I bought the book because of the stove top recipes for Taiwan. Here is one I think would be good but I haven't tried it. Pooris. http://chefinyou.com/2010/12/24/poori/
Tom
Maybe this would work for you
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/41508/anthracite-special-platform-9%C2%BE
:-)
-Gordon
Gordon
Thanks for being brave enough to share the failures as well as the successes. A true comedy of errors, and some lessons learned for me.
The parts of the crust that weren't destroyed (as well as the crumb), look pretty fine tho.
dobie
I did that for fun. It wasn't for anything serious at all - it followed on from a thread that went off at a tangent about baking in the firebox of a steam train, so having a coal fire in my office, I decided to give it a go!
I recall it tasted quite good - but the whole house smelt of burnt toast for the rest of the day...
-Gordon
Chuckle
Hi Liming
I run a session each week at a homeless centre. Although the kitchen we use has a couple of ovens, it's quite likely that the homeless guys may only have a hob - so we try and make whatever we make in the oven also in a frying pan.
So far we've made plain soda bread, fruit soda bread, naan breads, pizza, parathas, hot cross buns, Chelsea buns, etc. Using a combination of having a lid on the pan and turning the bread over halfway through, we generally manage to make acceptable bread.
As an aside we've also made pancakes, pikelets - and chocolate cake in the frying pan!
Good luck with the Dutch oven. I guess there's only one way to find out!
Not really relevant, but I've made bread in a George Foreman grill a couple of times! :)
Takes 4 minutes to cook!
There's Boston steamed bread, and there's pressure cooker bread - I have an article at my website about making bread in a pressure cooker -
Pressure Cooker Bread
Scanning the front page and this post came up. I've been meaning to try pressure cooking bread for awhile now. I appriceate the tip of using a pyrex bowl, as I'd been thinking more along the lines of loaf pans (that wouldn't have fit)
Any idea roughly how much the ball of dough going in weighed?
hi, thank you all for sharing your experiences and knowledge!
I don't have a pressure cooker and my kitchen is very tiny so it's impossible for me to build something to simulate an oven. I usually stay away as much as I can from fried food (bread). Also I've tried cooking bread in an enameled IKEA dutch oven on the stove top but I find that the bread quality is not comparable to the bread baked in the oven.
But your information indeed opens my eyes to all sorts of possibilities of baking bread! Thank you for that!
as for the weight of my dough, my tiny dough should weighs less than 350gram.
I'm thinking that modern oven heats up pretty quickly, so I might go with the safe route of prehating the oven for only 10 minutes at maybe 220c, preheat my dutch oven on the stove top on a much higher temperature, and bake my bread inside the dutch oven, which will be placed inside the oven. Hopefully the high temperature that the dutch oven retains can make up for my less competent oven, whether that 10 minutes of heating at 220c really creates a optimal baking environment.
I think this is my last resort that I can use to try to balances off the temperature requirements and my equipment limitations.
cheers!
Liming