I recently began baking sandwich bread with a Pullman pan.  It makes a great loaf of bread.  Having started with the basic white Pullman recipe on the King Arthur website, I have since started to alter the recipe to my tastes -- adding WW or rye flour, reducing the yeast and making a poolish, etc.

Anyway, the basic recipe, and other recipes for bread in a Pullman pan that I have seen, call for baking with the lid on for the first 25 minutes or so, then removing the lid and finishing baking.  I have not used an egg wash or seeds, but I think if I were going to, I would apply them both when I removed the lid.  Otherwise, you are likely to end up with a well-seeded pan lid.

egg wash will cause the lid to stick to the top of the bread.

As a general rule Pullman pans present some challenges that tapered bread pans do not..Due to the lid confining the rapidly expanding gasses within the dough, the crumb structure will generally be smaller, and more compact..These pans were designed for baking bread that had a uniformly square cross section that was 1.) easy to slice, both by hand and by mechanical slicers 2.) would fit in a mechanical toaster without getting stuck, such as sometimes happens due to the varying heights that loaves in unconfined pans sometimes acheive 3.) would allow the chef to make uniformly-sized sandwiches for restaurants, and the dining cars on trains, so as to make the presentation of the sandwich on the plate more attractive 4.) would allow the baker / chef to control food costs more closely as the amount of starch in a sandwich could be more strictly controlled due to the weight of a single slice of bread being far more uniform

Applying toppings to the loaves baked in Pullman pans is certainly possible, but it is also not what these pans were designed for..I try to keep my Pullman pans as clean as possible so that I am not tempted to use harsh scrubbers on the aluminized finish of the steel pans..Once that aluminized finish is scratched it will always be more prone to sticking, than had it not been scratched..

Baking very sweet breads in a Pullman pan, such as the Very Rich Cinnamon Raisin Bread that I recently posted about, are trickier than a Pain de Mie white bread..Getting any type of bread to release out of a Pullman bread pan depends almost entirely upon the rapidly cooling loaf of bread shrinking away from the sides and bottom of the Pullman pan faster than the steel pan itself shrinks as it too cools..Because the Pullman pan has a perfectly square cross section with 90-degree vertical sides, it is a lot more difficult to get a loaf of baked bread out of the pan compared to conventional bread pans with their tapered sides where the loaf virtually always falls easily out of the pan..The Pullman pan is also taller than conventional bread pans, thus there is significantly more surface area for the loaf to adhere to..A 4" tall Pullman pan is 1.5" taller than a 2.5" x 4.5" x 8.5" standard, 1 lb. bread pan; and 1" taller than a 3" x 5" x 9" large, 1.5 lb. bread pan..

The smallest Pullman bread pans that are easily found to be purchased in today's marketplace are the 4" x 4" x 13" size pans..These pans have 188 sq. in. of surface area without counting the lid..My no longer available 8.5" long Pullman pans have 134 sq. in. of surface area, if one does not count the lid..My 9" x 5" x 3" steel bread pans actually measure 8" x 4" in length x width on the bottom, and 9.25" x 5" in length x width arcoss the top; with a height of 2.625"..The total surface area of these pans, (rounded up because I did not feel like doing advanced algebra to calculate the actual surface area), measures out to approximately 106.5 sq. in..

So, one can see that sticky doughs in a Pullman pan represent a big challenge to getting the baked loaf out of the pan..Soaked raisins, and other dried fruits that are high in sugar, are prone to sticking whereever they touch the sides, or bottom of the Pullman pan..Thus making is substantially harder to get the loaf to release without tearing..The same principle also holds true with doughs that are high in eggs and sugars..

While egg washing and applying toppings to a loaf baked in a Pullman pan once the lid has been removed is certainly possible, it will necessitate using VERY careful techniques to remove the loaf without tearing it after it has finished baking..The baker must remove the pan from the oven in order to apply the egg wash..As soon as the pan is removed from the oven, the hot loaf will IMMEDIATELY begin to shrink, and to pull away from the sides of the pan..It will be extremely difficult to egg wash the top of the loaf WITHOUT some of the egg wash rolling down the sides of the loaf..This egg wash will effectively act as a glue to bond the loaf of bread to the sides of the Pullman pan..Been there, and done that when I first got my 13" pullman pan about 8 years ago..

While it is possible to carefully run a 5" icing spatula around all four sides of a cooled loaf that was baked in a Pullman pan, one runs the risk of gouging the loaf, and or scratching the pan..Neither result is desireable..

My recommendation is to only bake breads that contain flavorful ingredients that are contained IN the loaf when baking breads in a Pullman pan..Leave the washes, and toppings to breads baked in conventional, tapered bread pans, or hearth breads baked on a stone..

Bruce

Wow, thanks for the all of the replies! A very detailed response Bruce, much appreciated that you took the time to cover all those bases for me. I will just leave off the egg wash/seeds for now then.

Thanks again to all!

Well, I screwed up my loaf :(...I got too impatient and did not give it enough time to rise (its pretty cold out here) and the loaf did not bake very tall at all. Tasted nice and I had a great dough, but yeah, patience has never been my strong point. Bah! Thanks again to all!