Had to get rid of my gas stove (allergic to gas) and could no longer bend
down to place food into, or remove it from the oven without extreme
pain. So, my wonderful son got me a wall mounted "Speedcook Oven with
Convection (and Combination with microwaves) Kennmore Elite" oven.
It comes with its own recipe book in which there is one recipe which I
would consider to be real bread, called "Braided Egg Bread". I've made it
twice, even though it calls for white all purpose flour, just to get the
hang of how this kind of oven works etc.
However, both times the braid, which is set directly onto the special
"accessory" oven rack, comes out fairly well cooked and browned on top but
almost totally raw underneath. In fact, when I tried to turn the loaf over
to brown the bottom the first time, it fell apart. One half was cooked,
the other virtually raw.
I'm wondering if there is anyone who might have already mastered this
oven's peculiarities. It cooks with rather fast moving air at 375F for
18-20 minutes. Of course I've tried higher temperatures, up to 400F, and
longer, up to 35 - 40 minutes. But the crumb is very dry in these cases.
Question: I use bulk yeast and haven't got an accurate way to measure 1/4
oz. Is there an equivalent spoon measure I can use? My postage scale was
virtually useless!
The recipe calls for (and what I did the first time):
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour, divided.
1/4 oz. (1 envelope) dry yeast.
1/4 cup water
3 Tbs butter (I used a vegetable fat)
2 Tbs sugar (I used Splenda)
1/4 tsp salt (I used a little coarse sea salt)
1 egg, beaten. Plus 1 yolk for the wash.
Mix and let rise about 1 hour or until doubled in size. Shape the braid on
a 12" Pizza pan, slightly greased, and let rise covered about another hour
or until doubled in size. Place in the preheated oven at 375 F convection
method and bake 18 - 20 minutes. When I turned the loaf over to try to
cook the bottom, it fell apart!
The 2nd time I used whole wheat for some of the flour and cooked it almost
40 minutes. Of course that included the time the loaf was turned over to
again cook the bottom properly! But it was pretty flat and although it was
delicious, it's not very good looking this way.
So now, I guess, my next tactic would be to find or try to develop a more
appropriate recipe for this kind of oven. Not necessarily a braided one,
of course,nor one using white flour. My clay baker's Cloche is too high to
fit in the oven with the top on. I tried to cook a whole wheat dough in
just the bottom part of the cloche. It came out very flat, only the height
of the pan, and very chewy and altogether too moist to be satisfactory.
I'm kind of desperate to find a suitable solution before my son's visit -
he's on the east coast and may be coming west soon on business - and he
hopes to drop by for short visit. Any method, suggestion or recipe that
might help me "show off" his wonderful gift while he's here would be
greatly appreciated. Oh, we don't really like sweet or white doughs. I
try to grind my whole-wheat berries in the Vita Mix as much as possible.
Thank you all so very much for all your wonderful recipes and suggestions
for better and healthier foods. From a really old lurker. My bread machine
is a Sunbeam, which I love, but for which I've never seen any mention in
these lists.
Cheers, Jackie. jmroy @ att.com.