Our apartment is (barely) heated by gas, but GazMetro is also our source for cooking on the stove top and in the oven. Slow cookers are popular for their electrical efficiency and they are an alternative to ovens which can overheat the house during the summer. Turns out you can use your slow cooker for baking not only delicious crumples and puddings, but breads and pastries as well! I attempted to bake some bread in my slow cooker in early January but it wasn't a great success. It was a whole wheat herb loaf (ya sounds tasty don't it?) but it didn't rise very well and came out pretty dense. Still great with slices of cheese! Get a bread maker you say? Are you kidding? With all the appliances we've already adopted we have no room for one more. Recipe.net compares the two appliances and is convinced that slow cookers are an alternative to bread machines. I am positive it can be tastefully accomplished, so I've compiled my research to perfect slow cooker breads before I give it another shot.
THE SOURCES
I get kind of annoyed when I see the about.com templates because I don't always find their websites dependable and they favour middle aged housewives. Their slow cooker bread baking tips website though is actually a pretty good start and offers advice that I found on a couple other sites as well. Their recipes though don't offer much in the way of standard breads though and focuses on desserts. I know I know I love desserts too, but fresh bread is also pretty sweet.
Recipenet does offer a slow cooked bread recipe that worked for them, but I'm not entirely sure what wheat germ is or if I want to bring more germs into our apartment! The herb bread recipe I tried was from About Thyme, and I am only realizing now that it also calls for wheat germ which I did not include. Perhaps that explains why it didn't rise!
Many sites suggest raising the bread off the bottom of the slow cooker on aluminum foil balls to let heat bake the bottom, but not all of them do. Very few mention rising times as well, probably made up by the fact that breads are baked in a slow cooker for 3 hours instead of 1 hour in the oven.
I own Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hernsperger and Julie Kauffmann. I would love to see what they have to say but I recently lost my car keys and the book is stuck in my back seat. Thankfully, their book is available on Google books and is worth checking out!
Wheat germ free and doesn't call to raise the mold off the bottom. I would say go with this recipe since it comes from a reputable source!
THE SOURCES
I get kind of annoyed when I see the about.com templates because I don't always find their websites dependable and they favour middle aged housewives. Their slow cooker bread baking tips website though is actually a pretty good start and offers advice that I found on a couple other sites as well. Their recipes though don't offer much in the way of standard breads though and focuses on desserts. I know I know I love desserts too, but fresh bread is also pretty sweet.
Recipenet does offer a slow cooked bread recipe that worked for them, but I'm not entirely sure what wheat germ is or if I want to bring more germs into our apartment! The herb bread recipe I tried was from About Thyme, and I am only realizing now that it also calls for wheat germ which I did not include. Perhaps that explains why it didn't rise!
Many sites suggest raising the bread off the bottom of the slow cooker on aluminum foil balls to let heat bake the bottom, but not all of them do. Very few mention rising times as well, probably made up by the fact that breads are baked in a slow cooker for 3 hours instead of 1 hour in the oven.
I own Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hernsperger and Julie Kauffmann. I would love to see what they have to say but I recently lost my car keys and the book is stuck in my back seat. Thankfully, their book is available on Google books and is worth checking out!
Wheat germ free and doesn't call to raise the mold off the bottom. I would say go with this recipe since it comes from a reputable source!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment