thermal cooking pot for bread or cakes

[JoseyJo]

Hi, I've just see this http://www.permaculture.co.uk/reviews/r ... mal-cooker and wondered if anyone has tried cooking bread or cakes in one of these (or in a haybox if that's possible)?
I don't cook many stews/casseroles so the usual advantages of a haybox wouldn't really help me, but I do bake a lot of bread and quite a lot of cakes so this could be a good way of saving all that energy heating up the whole oven.
Would have to be good for it to be worth splashing out on though!

[marshlander]

Yes, I've used a haybox- super design on this site http://www.selfsufficientish.com/hayboxcooker.htm

Mr Ds pot?, I wouldn't buy it unless I didn't have an oven. At £90 for the pot plus £35 each for a bread tin or a cake tin - that's too much! A pressure cooker would do stews etc with just as little cooking time and cost much less. Maybe if totally off grid or camping/sailing it might be useful but even then not sure.

For bread you can't beat a hot oven - the pic of bread made with it looks rather sad - sunken bread with no crust. You wouldn't need the oven on much more than an hour and you could bake several loaves at once so I don't see much if any energy saving there. Compared to 1 loaf at a time boiling water on the stove and keeping it simmering for 15mins.

Bread machines also give a decent result and there are lots of cake recipes for them on the interweb too.

[JoseyJo]

Yes what I should really do is get myself organised and bake a lot of bread at once and freeze some, or bread and cakes together, but at the moment it's as organised as I can manage to get the bread made!

[wulf]

When I got a bread machine, I used to use it almost daily and then I discovered that making the bread by hand and baking in the oven gives "artisan" quality results with a much better texture and appearance. Roll forward about four years and my bread machine had largely been gathering dust with only occasional outings.

It then struck me that it might be more efficient than heating the oven for a single loaf. The tests I have done so far (using a power meter plug on the breadmachine and relying on "before and after" readings for the oven when there wasn't much else running in the house) suggest that this is the case. Despite taking 2-3 times as long to cook, the breadmachine used only about a fifth of the energy. It doesn't look as good but starting the dough by hand and cooking in the machine gives a pretty good result which is perfect for lunchtime sandwiches and other times when a "show-off" appearance is not very important (ie. most of the time...).

Therefore, I recommend a breadmachine with a bake setting as a quite efficient way of baking, especially if you already have one knocking around in the cupboard. Haven't finished out how to use it for baguettes though!

Wulf

[JoseyJo]

We had a bread machine and hardly ever used it, as I do like making bread the old fashioned way too, so decided to pass it on. But we do make bread more often now so it might be worth having for energy saving and when I'm low on time.