Success using bread machine dough cycle and Romertopf clay baker
Just wanted to share this as it worked really well for me today, resulting in the best and easiest 50% wholemeal loaf I've baked. I have the medium sized unglazed oval Romertopf.
I did the 50% wholemeal dough recipe on wholemeal dough cycle of my Panasonic bread machine, with the addition of some seeds. It took 3 hrs and 15 minutes. This resulted in just over 1kg of dough but I only used 800g of this for my loaf in the Romertopf, the remainder i used for rolls.
I put my 800g shaped loaf in to my (unsoaked) Romertopf which had a strip of baking parchment inside to stop the loaf sticking. It took about a hour for the dough to double in size.
I soaked the lid for a few minutes, and slashed the loaf prior to baking. The Romertopf went in to a COLD fan oven which I set at 240 C. 45 minutes later I took the lid off and baked for an extra 10 minutes.
Result, a lovely crisp crust and light, open textured loaf. I'm glad I only put 800g of dough in or it would have hit the lid I think - I'll scale the dough recipe down to 800g next time.