July 20, 2017 - 2:30am
steam oven soda bread/damper
Just joined after seeing article about using Cuisinart Combi steam oven for bread. I recently bought one and loving it. I want to try making similar to Irish Soda Bread or Australian Damper in the steam oven. But have not found a recipe using this type of oven so far. I am a novice baker (at 73). Any help would be appreciated. - hope I have posted correctly.
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Kudos on jumping in to baking, and on your oven purchase. I haven't gotten that oven (yet!), but have been looking in to it as an option for using less energy and especially to use outside on the days when it is just plain too hot to bake with my big electric oven. As a novice bread baker who has some struggles with getting the steam required for best results on many loaves, I am highly tempted by that steam option on the one you've bought.
Thanks for sending me off in search of information on the Australian Damper (I'd never heard of it before - sounds great for campfires)!
As for the Irish Soda Bread - well, I suspect that there are as many versions of this as there are Irishmen ;) I haven't seen one specifically for the type of oven that you have, but basically you can use any recipe and just modify to suit. For instance, any recipe calling for cooking in a dutch oven (DO) with lid for a certain period of time, and then lid removed, could be replaced by baking open at the called for temperature with steam for the "lid on" time (the lid just holds in the steam created by the loaf itself), and then turning the steam off for the rest of the bake.
A couple of recipes that might work for you can be found here (and you can find a ton of others by doing a search on the site):
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52351/irish-soda-bread-made-sort-maslin-flour
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/11028/sylvia0395-irish-soda-bread
One thing to keep in mind is that it makes a massive difference using fresh baking soda, so please do buy new to start with.
As for other bread recipes - any one of them can be scaled to suit the space available in your oven. A digital scale with grams makes things much easier to make accurately, and saves the guess-work from measuring cups / spoons - as well as not having to wash those.
There are more than a few folks who post here who have baked extensively with the smaller "mini" ovens and can give you a ton of assistance in figuring out how to scale recipes to suit.
Please do keep us posted on how you make out - and happy baking!
this is a great frecipe @ http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52351/irish-soda-bread-made-sort-maslin-flour - although i must confess that i posted it up so thanks to icedemeter for linking to it. Its easy to make and as icedemeter says irish soda breads were traditionally made in a pot over an open fire (as irish peasants didnt have ovens only an open fire and pot to cook their spuds and bread on - the total extent of their diet). So dutch oven recipe is perfect and is how i make mine. Its perfect....enjoy