4 March 2013
Our first baking-in-the-car experiment will be 100% Whole
Wheat Bread from "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day." The dry ingredients are
very simple: whole wheat flour, yeast, kosher salt, and vital wheat gluten.
The only wet ingredient is lukewarm water.
Freshly mixed dough
Dough after resting for two hours at room temperature
You can bake a loaf of bread right away, or refrigerate the dough to make it easier to handle. This time we refrigerated the dough overnight. The next morning I tore off half the dough, enough for about a one-pound loaf, and returned the rest of the dough to the fridge. Without any kneading or punching down, and with minimal handling, I formed the dough into a loaf on a piece of parchment paper.
Score the dough about 1/4" deep.
Both the loaf and the parchment paper go into the slow cooker. How easy!
A double layer of paper towels keeps moisture from dripping onto the bread as it bakes.
Ready to drive--the slow cooker goes onto the floor of the car, plugged into the inverter. We set the temperature to Keep Warm for one hour of rising, and then changed the temperature to Hot for 2 1/2 hours of baking.
UPDATE--Look for a third post on this topic as I gain more experience.
Hmm, I'd be curious to have a sample! Would it be easier to halve the amount of dry ingredients per bag, so that each bag makes one loaf?
ReplyDeleteNot easier. The book's idea is to take advantage of mass-measuring and mass-mixing to save time. I've already made this less efficient by mixing half as much dough at a time as the book does.
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