Are my equipments enough for baking a sourdough bread ?
Hi there.... a newbie to baking. I'm confused whether should I bake a sourdough bread or not. My active is quite active and under correct conditions doubles within 6 hours but the problem I realized recently is that my oven may not be suitable for bread baking. My oven is actually a Prestige POTG 9 PC 800-Watt Oven Toaster Grill ( an OTG). It has a Also wholewheat flour and cakeflour is only available in India. It has a temperature control knob and a timer but the rods cannot be controlled singularly. It can reach up till 482F. I also have a pressure cooker for baking and cooking purposes. Please let me know if I can bake a sourdough bread or not as a dutch oven cannot fit inside it. Don't be afraid to answer if baking a bread is not possible under my constraints
Thanks
You don't have to use a Dutch oven.
The main problem that almost all small ovens share is uneven heating. Some of them are "a little uneven, but OK". Others cause things like "My bread is burnt on the left-hand side, but the right-hand side is not cooked yet!"
In my opinion, you should try it, and find out what happens. Maybe you can find ways to get this oven to do a good job. That might include things like finding out which size of loaf is most successful.
If the experiment fails - oh well, some bad bread. Not a big disaster.
P.S. Perhaps some online reviews of your oven will include other people's experience baking bread in it.
Thanks for the reply. I want to say that every time I bake a bread or cake the crust is too thick and hard than expected but many a time the inside is beautifully cooked and moist but sometimes the crust becomes very thick and dark but the inside is raw and undercooked . Do you know any way to prevent this as it seems to happen everytime I bake. Maybe covering it with some container or a pizza stone ?
There are different kinds of heating problems. I don't know which one is really happening.
What happens if you just select a lower temperature when baking? Maybe your oven's thermostat is not quite true - many are not. (This is looking for the simplest problem first.)
You can wrap foil "armour" onto the parts that you expect may burn. That might help.
There are also "cloches", ceramic bell-shaped containers to bake under, but if a Dutch oven won't fit, I expect a cloche won't fit either.
I don't know how to use a stone in a toaster oven. (Maybe they work fine - I just have no clue.)
Thanks for the reply. I want to say that every time I bake a bread or cake the crust is too thick and hard than expected but many a time the inside is beautifully cooked and moist but sometimes the crust becomes very thick and dark but the inside is raw and undercooked . Do you know any way to prevent this as it seems to happen everytime I bake. Maybe covering it with some container or a pizza stone ?
I frequently bake in a Breville smart oven, which is probably similar to your toaster oven. As the baking chamber is small, and the heating elements are correspondingly smaller sized, I find it helpful to scale things down. I don't try to bake 9 x 13 pans of brownies or sheet cakes (a pretty common US size), nor would I try for a 900 gram rustic loaf in such an oven. I do bake decent tinned loaves (8.5 x 4" loaf pans), though I have to tent the exposed tops w/foil about 3/4 of the way through baking to prevent over-browning.
Regarding sourdough, why not try a sourdough baked in a loaf pan? Again, use a smaller sized loaf pan, and perhaps underfill it by a bit. A smaller volume loaf will cook to the center quicker than a big one. Or, if you're interested in high-hydration focaccia style textures, bake that sort of dough in a generously oiled 8" or 9" round cake pan. The pan will support the dough a bit, helping it to rise. Since it will be relatively flat with lots of air bubbles, the center should cook nicely before the crust browns too much. And hard-crusted focaccia is a good thing!
Flour & water are cheap--so make a 3-4 loaf batch of dough and experiment with various loaf sizes and shapes.
If your only flour choices are "whole wheat" or "cake", use the whole wheat. Cake flour has delicate texture, which is right for cakes, but it usually has too little strength to support the higher rise needed for bread.
I like the idea of a cloche. Just make sure it will fit inside your oven.
https://www.amazon.com/Sassafras-Superstone%C2%AE-Cloche-Bread-Specialty/dp/B0106TDDYY/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=cloche&qid=1552346167&s=home-garden&sr=1-19