I’m presently oven-less.
For a baking junkie, this is a very distressing state of affairs.
I’ve been on a bread bender of late, and was on quite a roll (ZING!) with some very successful white loaves. Knowing that I would be sans oven for a week, I couldn’t bring myself to put the bread adventures on pause… So I decided to have a crack at baking in our solid-fuel Weber.
The Weber does give a great flavour to roasted meats and veggies, but the heat beads make it very difficult to control the temperature. We don’t even have a suitable thermometer, so it was going to have to be a case of taking a punt and hoping for success.
I didn’t put the bread in till after J had cooked our dinner (awesome garlicky leg of lamb), hoping to get the heat beads at a stage when they were giving off a more even and settled heat. I had, however, put in a pizza stone on top of the grill from the start so that I could put the bread straight on top.
The bread recipe:
500g plain flour
280ml water, mixed with 1T instant mashed potato (this is a Nigella Lawson tip for fluffier bread)
1 heaped teaspoon salt
1/2 t powdered vitamin C (this is my improvised bread improver!)
7g sachet yeast
I cheat and use a bread machine to mix and knead the dough – easier than doing it by hand, and it seems to work better than my stand mixer with the dough hook. (I don’t like the way the bread machine cooks the bread though, you just don’t get a nice crust.)
I proved the dough for an hour first, then punched it down and gave it another quick knead by hand for a minute or two, before shaping it into a loaf, scoring it with a knife, sprinkling with sesame seeds and then letting it rise again for another hour.
Once the lamb was out of the Weber, I sprinkled the pizza stone with a bit of flour and put the dough straight on top, having sprinkled the dough with a bit of water first. I gave it about 35 minutes with the lid on, then checked it by knocking the bottom on the loaf till it made a hollow sound.
The result: WIN.
KATE
Hooray, you wrote a blog post! I should’ve known that you of all people wouldn’t let a tiny thing like a lack of oven prevent a baking WIN
xx
Have you tried “Hot Rocks” charcoal instead of heat beads? I get vastly better results for all bbqed things with charcoal rather than beads.
Lovely to see your baking sadness satisfied
That looks pretty good to me. Oven withdrawal appeased for now?
Looks very delicious! Yay for improvised baking.
Coal-fired bread! Barbeques are great, especially when you can tell the heat, but they make pizza bases all the more crisper than when baked in an oven as well.
Zoe, no I haven’t tried Hot Rocks – where do you buy them??
That looks delicious! Thanks so much for sharing. We’ve just purchased a Weber and love it.
Best wishes,
Madame Bonbon
Looks delicious! Now that’s what you call true baking passion. Thanks for posting this!
You’re good.
If there’s a will, there’s always a way to a watering mouth. Cheers!
THANK YOU!!!! Our landlord has not replaced our broken stove/oven and I needed an alternate to baking indoors. We are getting my husband a Weber Performer Coal grill for father’s day (June 19th here in Hawaii) and I’m starting to collect successful grill baked recipes. I look forward to experimenting with the bread recipe.
Hi Kate,
I’m working on a new Australian cookbook and would love to talk with you more about it, do you have an email address so I can send you some more info?
Thanks,
Allie
Hi Allie, you can email me at Eatingmelbourne @ gmail dot com.