The (Very) Acceptable Ovenless Loaf

 

I came to realise that my vision of perfection (The Perfect Ovenless Loaf) might be difficult for others, as well as myself, to achieve.  Indeed, unless you want square slices of bread (and there are many good reasons for this preference), assembling the necessary hardware might seem more trouble than it's worth.  I've written this post to offer a couple of different options for those of us who want to make bread regularly and don't have an oven, one using a frying pan and one using a saucepan.  Oddly, they produce very different results.

First of all, let's make the dough.  You can use just about any dough recipe for either method.

For a 230 mm/9 in frying pan or a 2 l/1 qt saucepan

2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

Method:

• Make the dough, following the instructions for Basic bread.  I  recommend using the vital wheat gluten, if you have it, because the cooking process isn't ideal. 
• The dough needs to be a firm one: if it's to soft, the loaf will simply spread itself all over the bottom of the frying pan and that isn't what we are trying to achieve.
  
• Take it out of the bowl and form a roughly circular loaf, which covers a half to two-thirds of the pan base.
  

Frying pan bread

I use a heavy, non-stick alloy pan for this (not Teflon coated!)  But you can also use any really well-seasoned frying pan that you're sure your bread won't stick to.  If your bowl doesn't sit securely on the frying pan, it would be worth getting a lid that fits, preferably one that doubles the useable height of the pan. You also want a fairly deep frying pan, which are anyway more generally useful than a shallow one.

• Put the dough in the frying pan and cover it with your lid or bowl.  Let the bread rise.
• When it’s ready to cook, put the frying pan over a high heat on a flame tamer, and cook for 15 minutes. If you smell burning, reduce the heat, if you can’t smell baking bread, increase it. The flame tamer ensures that the heat radiates across the base of the pan and this avoids spot burning.  Again, use your bowl as a lid.  If the bowl seems precarious and you don't have a domed lid, put on our usual lid and accept that the bread will be flatter than you might have chosen.  This is, after all, an acceptable ovenless loaf.
  
• After 15 minutes, turn the flame down to moderate and cook for a further 20 to 30 minutes.  After 20 minutes, take off the lid and check the loaf.  If the top is still very soft, cook it longer, checking every 5 minutes.  You won't get a hard crust on it.  Once you've cooked it this way a few times, you'll get a feel for how long it takes.
  
• Once the bread feels pretty firm, ie almost cooked, you are now going to spoil this rather nice wee loaf by turning it upside down to brown what was the top.  Even though it's almost cooked, the weight of it will flatten the loaf.  There's not much we can do about that.
• Pop the lid back on, give it about 5 minutes and then turn off the heat.  Rremove the lid and just leave the loaf in place until the frying pan is just warm.  Take the loaf out and cool it on a rack (I use my toaster).

If everything has gone according to plan, you will end up with a loaf of smaller diameter but greater height than the frying pan.  In fact I often see 'artisan' rye breads that don't look very different from how this one ends up.   Regardless, it will be delicious bread, incredibly good value and better than anything a small income voyager can buy unless they're some place where wholemeal bread is subsidised (as it used to be in the Azores, many moons ago).  The major drawback of frying pan bread is that the narrow slices are not ideal for sandwiches. 

 

Note:

• You can make really first-class rolls in the frying pan.  Use the bread recipe above and form it into rolls.  Put them in the pan so that they aren't touching and let them rise.  Then cook as above.  They will spread in to one another, but are easily separated.

Saucepan bread

 

This produces a Very Acceptable Ovenless loaf, and is now my preferred method of making a loaf.  It comes out with a really good crust all round and is of a suitable size for sandwiches.  For this method, you need a high-quality, straight-sided, heavy-based pan that has no hot spots.  Be careful if it has a laminated base - it might not take kindly to being used as an oven.  Although you can use the saucepan lid, the ideal is to use is a non-stick, cast alloy, 150 mm/6 in frying pan.  I generally use this for roasting Indian spices, but have found it very useful for many other purposes.  It doesn't take up much room.  (Mine is made by Avanti - it's a great little pan, but is totally let down by the so-called enamel, which I suspect is powder-coating and stained, irrevocably, the first time I used it.  I wish I'd bought the black version.)  If you use the pan's lid, oil that, too.  The saucepan I think is a nominal one litre/quart pan, but I've given the actual dimensions for the avoidance of doubt.

 

For a 150 mm/6 in saucepan, 70 mm/3 in deep

1 1/2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey

 2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

 

Method:

• Grease or oil your pan.  I was given some hemp oil and use that.  It's expensive to buy, but is very thick and is the best I've found for this purpose.  I suppose you could also line the pan with parchment paper to make it easier to turn out the loaf, but you probably won't get any crust on the sides of the loaf.
• Make the dough as above.  This time you can make it slightly softer if you want and I recommend using the honey - the slightly softer, well-rise loaf seems to suit this cooking best.  I always use vital wheat gluten if it's available.
  
• Put the dough in the pan and press it down to fit.  Put the lid on and let the bread rise.  One of the nice things with this method, is that you can easly put the pan in the sun! 
  
• When it’s ready to cook, put  flame tamer over a high heat and place the pan on it.  As soon as you smell burning, reduce the heat to moderate.  You want to be able to smell the bread baking, but you don't want to burn the base.  Condensation will form inside the lid - very apparent if you have a glass lid - which is why this loaf turns out quite differently: it is partly steamed.  The crumb will be quite a lot softer than that of the frying pan bread.  The same applies if you're using the frying pan lid.
  
  
  
  
• Cook for a total of 30 minutes and then take the lid off and gently press the dough to see if it's firm. If not, give it another 5 minutes and try again.  I can't really be much more specific because cookers (and pans!) vary so much.  Once you've cooked it this way a few times, you'll get a feel for how long it takes.
  
  
  
  
• Once the bread feels almost cooked, take hold of both handles firmly, and invert the pan over the frying pan.  Now brown the top in the frying pan for 5 minutes or so.
• Alternatively, if you are using the pan lid: ease it off the loaf (hopefully, it won't have risen so much that the dough stuck to it) and lower the heat right down under the flame tamer.  We now want to brown the top of it.  Turn the pan upside down, carefully.   If your pan is non-stick, really well greased, or you've used parchment paper, the loaf will slip out of the pan.  Put it down carefully, return the pan to the heat and put the loaf back into the pan upside down. Put it back over the heat with the lid on for 5 minutes or so.  If, as usually happens to me, the loaf is still stuck to the pan, place the whole lot  over the flame tamer for about 5 minutes.  Hopefully, the loaf hasn't risen above the pan, because in this case it will burn.  If that's the case, you might want to put it on your toaster, or simply forgo browning the top. 
• Once the loaf is browned, shake it out of the pan and put it to cool it on a rack (I use my toaster).  If it's reluctant to come out, leave it to cool down a bit and try to persuade it out by running a knife, with a rounded end around the loaf.  If you leave it too long, the sides and bottom of the loaf will go a bit soggy.  Don't tear it up getting it out.  If the worst comes to the worst, you can always dry it out over the toaster.  Again, you will soon learn the way that suits both your pan and your cooker.

This loaf comes out much higher than the frying pan loaf and is more suited to sandwiches, and toast.