We are going back full circle again. When we first came to Belize, I didn’t have an oven so I used to bake in a cast iron pot on the stove top. Anyway, the cooker (the oven and the knobs dropped off one by one until there were none) carked it a couple of months ago. So, I have gone back to cast iron baking again. It’s not actually difficult at all and it takes less gas (butane) and time. You don’t spend a whole 30 to 60 minutes (with a Mabe oven) waiting for it to heat up to the correct temperature. It just takes five minutes to heat up the cast iron pot and lid.
Just use your favourite bread recipe (of course Munchkin doesn’t have a recipe…she just chucks flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and whatever exciting things she can find (miso, grains, anything really….oh…great tip…old condiments or end bits of jam in jars are great to chuck into bread). Mix it all up, knead into dough and that’s Munchkin’s Chaos Bread.
Please remember that my “chaos cooking” started off with following recipes and doing it over and over again. In order to get to improvising and creating, you need to put in the “10000 hours” of cooking. BTW, I may not have mentioned that I worked as a cook whilst I was in medical school so have been cooking for a very long time.
If you require a bit more structure to your cooking methods, here is a standard bread recipe courtesy of Fannie Farmer Cookbook:
- Take a large mixing bowl and add 1/2 cup of lukewarm water and 1 package of yeast.
- Let stand 5 minutes then stir to dissolve the yeast.
- Put in another bowl: 1 cup milk, 1 cup boiling water, 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp salt. Stir until lukewarm and then combine with yeast mixture.
- Add 3 cups of all-purpose flour. Stir and add more flour if needed to make the dough.
- Knead, let rise, shape and bake (see below).
- This recipe makes about 8 to 10 rolls.
Okay, so this is what you need to do:
- Heat up cast iron (12 inch diameter will do) pot (grease bottom well) with lid for 5 minutes on medium-high heat.
- Take bread, shaped into rolls, and place in cast iron pot.
- Turn heat down to lowest and bake for 8 to 10 minutes with lid on.
- Take lid off and flip bread over with a metal spatula. Bake for another ten minutes.
Et viola:
Cool on wire racks as you do with any old sort of bread.
Enjoy:
How are they for texture?
We think the texture is just fine but I guess you would have to try it yourself. I suppose that if you are used to shop-bought, super light, sugar-filled, airy bread that is more air than bread and not home-baked bread, you might have a problem with it.