Making bread in a slow cooker

My flat doesn't have an oven. A fabulous sea view, but no oven.

My parents recently gave me a slow cooker.

 I enjoy baking bread. It seemed to me that an oven and a slow cooker essentially work in the same way, and so I decided to try making bread in a slow cooker.

The first hurdle was yeast. I normally (like, always until now) use dried yeast in those convenient sachets. My supermarket doesn't sell convenient sachets, it sells cubes of what is apparently fresh yeast. (Google Images and friends on Twitter, thank you for helping me work this out!)

I have to admit, at this stage, I had some doubts about this bread. Using yeast I'd never seen before and a slow cooker instead of an oven, I could think of many, many things that could go wrong. But I had nothing better to do with my morning, so I thought I would press on regardless!

Ingredients: 1 cube of yeast, 600ish grams of flour, a pinch of salt, about 400ml of lukewarm water, a teaspoon of sugar.

Cube of yeast

Flour and salt

Mash and stir the yeast into the water/sugar, until it's all dissolved:

Yeast dissolved into water and sugar mix

Mix the yeast/water/sugar mixture into the salt/flour mixture until it makes a dough. It should look something like:

Dough, unrisen

Leave to rise, covered loosely with clingfilm, until doubled in size. (This took me about an hour, but may take longer depending on how warm your house is. Don't overheat in an effort to speed the process up, because that will kill the yeast.)

Dough, risen

Get your slow cooker ready, punch down the dough, and then put your punched down, deflated dough into the bowl of the slow cooker. I didn't use baking paper, because I didn't have any in the house, but I would recommend it for getting it out of the pot more easily at the end!

In the slow cooker

In the slow cooker with lid on!

Heat on high for as long as it takes to cook - it took my slow cooker about two hours, but check regularly as it's going to see how long it takes with yours. Note that you will not see a crust forming on the top of your loaf of bread, because of the way slow cookers cook - the crust forms on the bottom and the sides - so you'll need to test the top for springiness.

Try not to touch it until you're fairly sure it's set though, else it will probably collapse. (See below...)

Bread, cooking

When it's done, the top will be soft to the touch, but not squashy - you'll know it when you see it, no doubt! Mine looked like below - you'll see that where I touched it after an hour and a half, it's collapsed. I'd avoid doing that, if I were you...

Cooked loaf, still in the slow cooker

Crusty bottom and sides of the loaf

Wait for it to cool before cutting it, else it will go all gummy. This will be torture, as you'll have to endure the smell of warm fresh-baked bread, and not be able to eat it. Resist.

Sliced loaf

Soft, fresh, warm bread

Enjoy!

Read more...

Today's celebratory events

Today's events were somewhat limited, since I didn't go to the casting of the new bell for the cathedral last night (it was late, in town, and public transport can be erratic at the best of times round here). Since that's the case, I didn't go to the opening of it this afternoon, either. I did, however, manage to make it to the weirdest culinary event I've seen in a while, if not ever.

A group of chefs called Les Toques Brûlées were put on stage to cook, in little groups, local specialities. At ground level, the crowd were waiting to be fed. Having learnt my lesson from the combat naval, I stayed away from the sharp elbows and vicious fighting for free things that seems to invade people round here, and took photos instead. Sadly, I was too transfixed by the dancers - who could not stop laughing at themselves and the crowd - to actually photograph them. So you'll have to make do with photos of the chefs. The food smelt good, even if I didn't get to eat any of it!

Read more...

Week 7 and lunch

Week 7 is all runs of 25 minutes, but with crap music. So I'm going to repeat Week 6, day 3 until it's time to move on to Week 8. Today's run went ok, too - I think I'm getting better at this. The last couple of minutes is still horrendous, but that might get easier with practice. It had better - next week, they add more minutes. Apparently the aim is to have me running 30 minutes non-stop by the end. Oh goody.

Today's attempt at cooking lunch was what can only be described as a failure. I tried to make Spanish omelette, and, well, it didn't work. All the ingredients were there - and cooked, even - but you would struggle to call it anything like an omelette. More like scrambled eggs with potatoes and red pepper. Tasted fine, as long as you don't actually look at it.

Will it keep til tomorrow? I had planned to have a nice half tortilla to eat for lunch tomorrow; instead I have a bowl of scrambled eggs. In theory, it should, since it's the same stuff as the tortilla would be. But my grasp of food hygiene is such that it's only blind luck that we haven't both died of food poisoning by now, so I'd welcome any advice...

Read more...