Baking on the Stove: Experiment 2

23 March 2009

By Laurie

Since my first experiment of baking on the stove showed promise, I continued the experiment today. Some changes were made, of course. After all, that’s what experiments are!

Once again, I baked bread – the sweet buns for our breakfast.

Only this time, I put the stovetop oven contraption (for lack of a better term) onto the second smallest burner and put it on the lowest flame.

I checked it after ten minutes – yes, I can’t control myself, I must peek – and while it was baking, it was not burning as quickly as yesterday’s, which is as it should be.

At twenty minutes of baking time, it was still baking nicely, but a little slowly.

Then I remembered a stainless steel lid that I’d come across a day or two before, and added that on top of the aluminum lid at 25 minutes – less direct heat transference, more hot air, theoretically – and put it all back onto the second largest burner at the lowest flame setting and let it bake further. But it was progressing nicely, much better than yesterday.

I called the buns done at 30 minutes and am quite pleased with today’s results.

Here you can see the two metal lids I’ve used as space separators. The second one, based on today’s experience, is definitely necessary, but it might be possible to work with just the stainless steel lid and not use the aluminum lid at all. That’ll be for further experiments.

And here you can see how the buns turned out. They’re still slightly underdone – need about one or two more minutes of baking time, but I didn’t want to burn the bottoms. The bottom of the buns is dark, but not to the point of tasting burnt. The buns were actually quite nice and much closer to the end goal.