Pane Cafone (Country Man's Bread)

Pane Cafone (Country Man's Bread)

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Some new things I'm trying

I'm always on the look out for a better or easier way to get things done.  Using a scale in my baking is, in my humble opinion, a better way to measure if you have the right scale.  I'm still searching for that one but I think I'm getting closer.
One of the other things I like to use in baking bread is a Pampered Chef 15" Pizza stone.  The only problem I have with the pizza stone is it's size.  I can only fit 2 pans of bread at a time on it and that can really slow me down when I have 5 loaves to bake.  Well while walking through Home Depot today to pick up some paint for a marking bike ride I was going on, I happened to notice a nice box of 18" x 18" x 1/2" unglazed terra cotta floor tile and instantly wondered how well one or two would fit in my oven.  As luck would have it, one of the tiles fits very nicely and I can fit all 5 of my bread pans on it.  Best of all it was only $1.77 per tile so for less than $5 I have a new, larger baking stone and a back up.  I've heard rumors of unglazed ceramic tiles containing lead and there is some debate back and forth on baking message boards about that but I don't recall hearing anything bad about terra cotta.  Just to be on the safe side though I plan to purchase a lead testing kit  and test the tile before I use it for anything.  I don't like extra ingredients in my bread if I can help it.

 
My bike schedule is such right now that I won't be able to do much in the way of baking until later next week so more through testing of the new scale and tile will have to wait for now.
Stay tuned.

1 comment:

  1. Terra Cotta tiles, unglazed. First, my understanding is the glazes contain lead pigments coloring agents, so its glazed tiles that present a potential health risk, although that usually comes from storing acidic liquids in glazed pottery. I have used terra cotta type tiles, about 30% cracked after a few cycles. One can also bake in terra cotta type clay pots, the Egyptians did!!! Dr. G.

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