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.
with a soaked hot Romertopf to see the difference. I wouldd cut the dough down to 75 g though. You will be amazed at the difference!
Thank you - I'll give this a try!
I'm going to try a sourdough loaf using the clay pot method to see if that works well too.
Doesn't the Romertopf have to be preheated so that when you put the dough in, there is steam generated immediately from the hot Romertopf? Or does this work because the top of the Romertopf was preheated?
I have made loaves in an unheated loaf pan and covered them each time with the top of an oblong la cloche. Maybe your method produces similar results, with a different shape, of course.