So we baked bread today. Let me say that there were some limitations because the oven only holds one loaf and my recipe is for two loaves, so I had to cut it in half. This would not normally be a problem, but I mixed it up last night at 1:00am, so I suspect my math might have been off.
Mr. Gaia set the oven up about 2:00pm and it got up to around 300F. When he put the loaf (in its stoneware loaf pan - it's recommended that you use black cookware, but we don't currently have any) in the oven, the temp dropped to 250F and stayed there.
We let the loaf bake for about 3 hours (it looked done after about an hour, but food doesn't burn in the solar oven, so we left it).
The results - a smallish loaf (it could be that I didn't use enough yeast because it just didn't rise well at all) that is dense. But it is moist and tasty.
I would definitely bake bread in the solar oven again - but I would be a lot more careful about my math.
I'm especially glad we have it because our AC is broken. It waits until it's almost 100F and then breaks. Sigh. Luckily, we held onto our window unit AC and FABULOUS Mr. Gaia was able to rig it up in the bedroom today so we could at least have a cool room for sleeping (after 2 nights of 87F temps). I can't even imagine running a regular oven when the house is as hot as it is now. I doubt we will be cooking much inside until we get it fixed/replaced. Mr. Gaia grilled tonight (yummy steaks from Sun Harvest Foods along with grilled onions and grilled jalapenos stuffed with garlic cream cheese).
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1 comment:
Dadgum Murphy's Law! It sounds as though it's been making the rounds lately, and took your AC with it.
Your experiments with the solar oven sound yummy. I'm inspired.
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