tartine bread without dutch oven (inverted mixing bowl on top of heavy skillet)?
I'm contemplating buying a dutch oven to make tartine bread. It would be a strict unitasker for my purposes. It's bulky and if I get a bare one, I might not bake often and it could rust. An enameled one can't handle high heat and shouldn't be heated empty.
I do already have some heavy carbon steel De Buyer pans. What would be the disadvantage of using an upside down mixing bowl as a dome lid to raise humidity?
Best Answer
Overall, you should be fine.
The purpose of the dutch oven is trapping moisture and, to some extent, coralling the dough.
Keep the following in mind:
- Make sure your bowl can handle the heat - high heat might cause it to warp. To some extent, this is fine, but if the gaps at the bottom get too big, you won't trap the steam the way you want. But some loss is fine, the bread needs to "dry" a bit.
- Your dough should not be too runny, otherwise it might stick to the bowl and make removal somewhat messy (unlike in a dutch oven, it would be difficult to use parchment paper to keep the sides from sticking). So make sure, the bowl is big enough and the loaf well shaped.
- Unlike the dutch oven lid, the inverted bowl has no handle and is likely to slip when you try to lift it, please be extra careful not to burn yourself!
- If you put a cool bowl over the bread, you might get some condensation you wouldn't get from a pre-heated dutch oven lid. Drops of moisture may leave traces on the crust, but that won't affect the quality of the bread. With a nice dome-shaped bowl, this effect should be minimal.
----Edit----
There are a couple of ways how to bake tartine bread w/o a dutch oven. For one example from our seasoned advice, see here.
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What can I use instead of a Dutch oven for sourdough?
Another alternative to a Dutch Oven is to use Pyrex for baking sourdough. Now you will need to make sure that casserole pot or Pyrex dish is able to withstand the high heat of sourdough baking. Some are rated for high heat, but you will need to be sure that it can handle high heat before you use it.Can sourdough be mixed in a metal bowl?
Glass and ceramic can work too, but make sure it's thick enough to take a beating. You'll want to stay away from metals other than stainless steel because the acid in the sourdough can react with the metal and leach toxins into your dough, however it's uncommon to find non-stainless steel metal mixing bowls.Can bread be baked in a stainless steel mixing bowl?
Stainless steel is non-reactive, and stainless steel bowls are perfectly safe for mixing and rising your bread dough. It is more important to make sure your bowl is large enough to allow your dough to increase in size as it rises.How to make sourdough bread without DUTCH OVEN
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Trang Doan, Rachel Claire, ROMAN ODINTSOV, Farhad Ibrahimzade