[Sca-cooks] Stone

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

>>The only time I didn't like the results was when I
>>baked
>>challah on a pizza stone.  The stone took too long to
>>heat up, and the
>>bottom of the loaves didn't brown nicely.  I don't
>>know if that was the
>>fault of the stone or the oven, though.
>
> Neither, actually!  Heat the stone beforehand as you
> preheat the oven.  When the oven is at the required
> temp, the stone will be nice and warm and ready for
> your bread!


I considered doing that, but I prefer to do the final rise of any shaped
bread right on the pan or stone it is to be baked on.  I always end up
smooshing it if I try to move it from wherever it's nicely shaped and
raised onto a pan or stone.  Also, with pizza crust, I've found that the
bottom starts browning as soon as I put it on the hot stone.  If I lift
a nice large braid of challah onto the hot stone and then try to adjust
it to look right, well, it would be a disaster.  I suppose I need a
wooden peel that the bread would slide right off of, but I have never
seen one for sale.  Perhaps I should start researching that on the 'net.
  Maybe one of those yucky air-flow cookie sheets would work the same
way?  Hrm, I wonder.  Meanwhile, I have two pizza stones, one of which
is considerably thinner than the other.  That one works well for bread
without preheating.  But it's smaller and doesn't hold two large loaves
of challah.  I usually use it for smaller whole wheat loaves.  Mmm... I
made two honey-wheat loaves last night, one with a cinnamon swirl.
Peanut butter sandwich heaven...

So, I've totally been getting into bread making lately.  I've made bread
on occasion in the past, but I've been on a bread kick for the last few
weeks and I'm really enjoying it.  Bear, I remember you mentioning in
the past that there are only about four existing period recipes for
bread.  In a brief perusal of the Florilegium, I only found one (if I
missed the others, go right ahead and yell at me - I only scanned it
quickly.)  Would you please direct me to or post the other three?

Thank you!

-Magdalena
who's trying to type around an extra fluffy cat who insists on lying
*on* the keyboard.  At the moment, he is lying on one
of my wrists with his chin on the other.  He's in for a surprise when I
go to use the mouse to send this message...