Rometopf Bagel Baker
Recently scored one of these discontinued Romertopf Bagel Bakers. Think it dates back to 1996, or at least that's the copyright date on the box that mine doesn't come with; made in Mexico rather than Germany so possibly not the best quality but I didn't pay much for it Used. Delivery wont be for another couple days or so but in the meantime am wondering if anyone here knows anything more about this unit and can offer helpful hints about its usage. Other than the few listings on eBay and craigslist, can't find any references to it online, even at Romertopf, so am guessing this baker was hugely unpopular (which is right up my alley.) Am hoping to find success with SD rye and raisin pumpernickel, there are a bunch of tempting recipes here I'd like to try out on unsuspecting family members while it is still good baking weather, whew. Thanks in advance for any pointers.
Well done on your find. I can't help with your question having only just got interested in clay bakers. The biggest problem that I see with it, and I am guessing this might be why they were not popular, is that it only appears to bake four bagels at a time. Who makes four bagels? So there would be a lot of reloading it, a bit wasteful of oven use I think. I used to bake enough bagels for a fortnight when I made them regularly and used all three oven shelves for baking.
However, I expect you will get a much nicer result in that than I did on my oven shelves! I will look forward to seeing what you bake and how you get on with it. I do love bakeware and find it hard to ignore a special tin or dish! But of course storing them does become a problem!
The Baker does only hold four bagels at a time, and will take up the majority of a rack on my little oven where a single baking sheet could handle a dozen. That's why I bought a second one as well from another vendor, so I can bake eight at a throw using the two racks my oven holds. That's about as many as I would want from a recipe, as I bake so much other bread and pastries too over the course of a week.
And yes, storage does become an issue, especially as all these vessels are quite breakable and there is not a lot of space left in the kitchen. Time to put up more shelves!
Thanks for the encouragement, Bakingmad. I will certainly report back with the results. :)