#110 – Baking Pans With Elly from Elly’s Everyday

What pan should I use to bake my bread? Metal, ceramic, glass, dutch oven…there are so many out there. What are the differences? What about non-stick? What temperatures can I use for each one? How can I stop my dough from sticking? How can I work out how much dough my pan will take? And what about pizza? How can I make the best one at home?

These questions, and many more, are answered in today’s episode with expert wholegrain sourdough baker and dear friend of the podcast, Elly from Elly’s Everyday. Prepare for over an hour of beautiful sourdough bread geekery that will enhance your baking, however you do it.

And if you want more, Elly kindly stayed on to record an aftershow where we answered supporter questions including how to create the best crust, talked even more about loaves that stick and shared tips on getting pizza to rise. If you’d like that, come and join us as a supporter at The Kitchen Table.

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What we cover:

• Different pan options you have for baking bread, focusing on wholegrain sourdough.
• Aluminium, steel, ceramic, glass, cast iron and silicone pans – the pros and cons of each.
• What’s unique to each type, what you have to watch out for/be careful with.
• Tips for using each type, including preparation, temperatures and baking.
• Sizing, including how to make a dough that will fit your pan…whatever its size.
• How to stop your bread sticking.
• Getting a good crust.
• Pullman pans – why they’re special and how/why we use them.
• What we choose to bake with and why.
• Options for baking pizza and what both of us use.

The personal views and opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect our own personal views or opinions. We recognize that our guests are whole persons and this may include views we or our audience actively disagree with; our guests are invited to the show because we feel they have something valuable to share with us all, and we do not ask them to censor their personal views on air. Our sharing of their work is not necessarily an endorsement of their personal views.

Resources:

Ellys Wholegrain Sourdough You Tube channel

Elly’s Soap-Making You Tube channel

Elly’s website

Elly’s video: My favourite pans for wholegrain sourdough

Elly’s video: Make sourdough bread recipes that fit your pan perfectly

Elly’s video: These pans taught me so much 100% whole wheat sourdough pullman pan loaf

Elly’s 6 year old video on various baking setup options (oldie but a goodie)

Alison’s video: How to tent a loaf with aluminium foil (really useful if you don’t have another pair of hands to help you)

Get Alison’s Emile Henry pan whilst supporting the podcast (without paying any more)

Get Alison’s Emile Henry pizza stone whilst supporting the podcast (without paying any more)

 

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Transcript:

Alison:
What pan should i use to bake my bread metal ceramic glass dutch oven there are so many out there what are the differences what about non-stick what temperatures can i use for each one how can i stop my dough from sticking how can i work out how much dough my pan will take and what about pizza how can i make the best one at home these questions and many more are answered in today’s episode with expert whole grain sourdough baker and dear friend of the podcast ellie from ellie’s every day prepare for over an hour of beautiful sourdough bread geekery that will enhance your baking however you do it and if you want more ellie kindly stayed on to record an after show where we answered supporter questions including how to create the best crust talked even more about loaves that stick and shared tips on getting pizza to rise if you’d like that come and join us as a supporter at the kitchen table

And:
Welcome to the ancestral kitchen podcast.

Alison:
I’m allison a european town dweller living in england and

Andrea:
I’m andrea living on a family farm in northwest washington state usa.

Alison:
Pull up a chair at the table and join us as we talk about eating cooking and living with ancestral food wisdom in a modern world kitchen.

Music:
Music

Alison:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Ancestral Kitchen Podcast and I have a much loved guest with me today. Hello Ellie.

Elly:
Hello Alison. It’s so good to be here with you again.

Alison:
It’s really nice to talk to you. So this is Ellie from Ellie’s Every Day for anyone who happens to not know who you are. Although is there anyone in the world or anyone in our listeners who doesn’t?

Elly:
You are too kind. You are very kind.

Alison:
Ellie has a whole grain sourdough bread YouTube channel under her name Ellie’s Every Day and she also has a soap making channel. This is the third time you’ve been on the podcast Ellie. We had Ellie back on, back in the old days, episode number 10, where we talked about sourdough bread making and a little bit about soap making too. And then number 42 episode, which was called How to Get and Grind the Best Flour for Bread. So if you are interested in grinding and you’re interested in sourdough bread, you probably are if you’re listening to this episode, go back and have a listen to those. We are very excited to have you back on. And although you don’t know, though maybe your ears burn, we do talk a lot about you on our supporter Discord forum. People often share your breads and talk about your methods. So thank you very much.

Elly:
Oh, you’re welcome. That’s really nice to hear. Thanks, Alison.

Alison:
So you are in Australia, so it’s evening for you. Do you want to tell me what the last thing that you ate was?

Elly:
Yes, it is 6 p.m. here and the last thing I ate was half an hour ago, I had a piece of bread, a piece of toast actually, whole grain sourdough toast with various grains with peanut butter and honey.

Alison:
Oh, wow. That’s a lovely combination.

Elly:
It was an indulgence. It really was. But I have to admit the evening is not my most energetic time of day and I thought, oh, you know, I’m just going to have a bit of a splurge here. So I had that and it was delicious.

Alison:
Do you often toast your bread or do you just leave it until it’s kind of going a bit stale and then toast it? What do you do with a toaster? Is it something you use a lot?

Elly:
I nearly always toast my bread. Even when I make sandwiches, I often give it just a light toasting because I think it just, it does sort of freshen it up. Very fresh bread is fine, but I only bake, as you know, I only bake 100% whole grain sourdough breads and they’re full of flavour and moisture and, you know, lovely textured bread. But I just love, I love toast. I love toasted bread of, you know, sometimes when I make toast, I toast it really dark. Sometimes for a sandwich, I might just toast it a little bit. So I toast it most of the time, but not always. Sometimes really fresh bread, I don’t. But it has to be very fresh.

Alison:
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Like the first day. I love toast. I really love toast. And for such a long time in Italy, we didn’t have a toaster. And so I had to empty everything out of the oven and put the grill on, which always takes like 15 times as long as the toaster and put the bread under there. So I very rarely did it. And I was going, oh, I want a toaster. I want a toaster. But we had such a small kitchen. So many other pieces of equipment. And the budget was tight. And I just thought, no. And then about a year before we left Italy, I treated myself to a toaster. And Gabriel’s completely addicted to it. He just, he’s like me. He loves his bread toasted. So fresh bread is kind of another thing. You don’t need the toaster there. But I think after like maybe two days, I like to get the toaster out and toast bread. And Gabriel absolutely loves it. I think that crunch, you know, is such a sensory kind of a good thing and it provides satisfaction in another way. I agree. And to have the bread warm enough to make whatever you’re putting on it kind of go a bit gooey and melted, that’s really nice too.

Elly:
And I think it’s another version of, you’re adding a little bit more caramelisation too to the bread, so it adds flavour as well as crunch. It’s a double win in my book. You know, you’re getting a little bit of colour, a bit of browning. So it’s like you’re giving each slice a little crust. That’s where I think about it. Get a little flavour. If anybody’s seen my YouTube videos, my toaster is always there on the bench, right there, front and centre. It’s probably our most used appliance, if I’m honest, would be our toaster.

Alison:
You’re a toaster fan. I didn’t know that about you. I’m glad I asked that question. Cool okay uh the last thing i had because um this is unusual for me because we’re recording at nine o’clock in the morning here which is not normal so usually everyone hears what i ate for lunch but today i’m going to talk about what i had for breakfast so mornings are a time where i try to take the stress off a little bit so i can have some time to myself in the morning um i like to wake up slowly if possible and then have a cup of tea rob usually goes downstairs and makes me a tea um and then sometimes i sit in bed sometimes i read sometimes i do some stretching and so i like to have breakfast kind of organized so i don’t have to go down and do loads of stuff for it so Since we bought the Instant Pot, we’ve got the smaller one. I know you’ve got two Instant Pots. We have been using it to make porridge in the mornings. Fantastic. And we just set it up all the night before. So we put in oatmeal. We’ve got oatmeal instead of that stone ground oats for people who speak American English. We put medium oatmeal in and water in. And we put it inside a bowl inside the insert. and then we put water in the insert to create enough steam to stop it flashing burn.

Alison:
And then we leave it. Sometimes we sour it by putting in a bit of, you know, sourdough starter or kefir. And last night we didn’t. So it’s just literally oatmeal and water. And then when Rob makes the cup of tea, he switches it on and we put it on low pressure for eight minutes, I think. And then put it on keep warm. And so by the time I come down, it’s ready. I literally just take the lid off, scoop some out, put the lid back on and then leave it. Rob has his breakfast a bit later because he works early in the morning. And then when Gable comes down, he’s got some too. So I have oatmeal with some collagen powder stirred in because some mornings I feel like I need some extra protein. And some linseed, ground flax or linseed. I have that in my lips too. Yeah. I’ve seen you. I think you’ve done a video of you grinding your flaxseed. Possibly. Yeah. I’ve seen it somewhere. Love that stuff. So I have that every morning. And then we bought a massive batch of hazelnuts from the loose store here, you know, where you can buy by the kilo. And I soaked them and roasted them. And so they’ve really got that toasty, roasty hazelnut flavor. Put that on. And then some olive oil. I like olive oil on my porridge.

Elly:
Sounds so good.

Alison:
Yum. Really, really delicious.

Elly:
Do you ever do the pre… Yeah. Sorry, just I’m curious about the instant pot. Do you ever do the set it in advance for it to call?

Alison:
I haven’t got to that yet. Right. And I haven’t really. It doesn’t come with an instruction booklet anymore because you can get the instructions online. And I’m like, oh, I don’t want to go online. I don’t want to get the instructions. I’m just going to figure this out for myself. And because of that, I think I haven’t quite got to the setting in advance thing. No. The reason actually we don’t, we wouldn’t do that probably with the oats is that during the night they settle and all the smaller particles go to the bottom and all the water goes to the top. And so I think if we, if we, Rob stirs it before he switches it on. And I think if we didn’t do that, we’d probably end up with kind of a congealed stuff at the bottom. Yeah, that might not work. And water at the top. So I haven’t tried the pre-heat thing, the pre-set thing, but I did just figure out how to do that on my washing machine about two weeks ago after having lived here for eight months. So maybe I’ll get the Instant Pot soon.

Elly:
I don’t know. You can’t rush these things, Alison.

Alison:
Exactly. Exactly. There’s more important things. Okay, so today’s topic is baking pans. And I know that a lot of people are looking forward to this episode. I had the idea last year of doing this episode. And then really randomly, about the same time, you posted a baking pan video on your YouTube page. And so I thought, I’ve got to get Ellie on to talk about this. So, the first thing that I want to ask, or get you to confess, really, is I have five bread pans. How many bread pans do you have, Ellie?

Elly:
Oh, no. I really don’t want to. Do I really have to give you an exact answer? Well, if you categorize them.

Alison:
If you round it up to the nearest hundred.

Elly:
It is a little bit embarrassing, but my excuse for having way too many is that, you know, I’m sharing a lot of information with people and I’m passionate about them and they’re one of the few things that I do actually collect, so that’s my excuse. But I have, here we go, I have 13 metal pans. Okay. Wow. Part of the problem with this is that I buy them in pairs. I really like, I can’t just buy one. If they come in pairs, then I’m going to have to get two. Okay. And I have three glass loaf pans and I also have two ceramic. But I don’t really call my ceramic ones loaf tins or loaf pans. They’re more like ceramic bakers, I guess is what I call them. But there’s about eight. If you add all of those, it’s 18 all up, which sounds ridiculous. It is a lot. And I definitely don’t need… Any more than one or two, to be honest. But I’ve been baking my own bread for a very long time. Some of them I’ve had for a really long time and I’ve got the room. So I just stack them neatly in my cupboard and most of them sit inside each other too.

Alison:
That’s handy. Yeah, yeah. I’ve noticed that some of our small ones, like our Pullman one is quite small and it fits inside our Emile Henry in the cupboard, which is useful. Yes. I would like to have more, but I don’t want to fight with where they’re going to go in the cupboards so I’m sure that as time goes on probably I’ll look at a few more 18 okay I don’t know what I would have guessed at I think I think you’re the right person to come and talk about with this with us that’s all that tells me okay so what we’re going to talk about in this episode is the different options you have with baking pans what’s unique to each type and what you have to watch out for and be careful for with each type tips for each sort including the preparation of them and the baking of them the sizing we’re going to talk about lining and getting things not to stick Pullman pans and then we’re going to talk about what we choose to bake with and why hopefully we’ll have time to talk about options for baking pizza and then I’ve got a lot of questions from our community our kitchen table community which are directed at Ellie from people who want her help so I’m hoping that Ellie will stay on to record a special kind of after show

Alison:
With those questions, which would be really nice. Thank you. So yeah, remember that Ellie has a wonderful way of calculating how much dough to fit in your pan based on your pan size. So do stay on and we will listen to her explain that a bit later. Okay, before we dive in, let’s go to an ad break.

Alison:
Okay so Ellie I’d like to start by talking about each type of bread pan material by material and talking about the pros and cons of them so to start with you said you have 13 metal pans can you talk a little bit about metal because you obviously know a lot about that metal pans first yeah

Elly:
Absolutely I think the main reason why I have so many metal pans is that they’re the most widely available. If you go to any kitchenware store or even charity shops or secondhand places, they’ve always got metal pans of some sort available. And they’re really affordable as well. So cheap, they’re easy to get. Those are the main two reasons. A lot of, well, actually, nearly all metal pans though these days have some sort of nonstick coating, which for some people is a drawback. Personally, I don’t worry about that, but I do make sure that I care for any non-stick pans that I use. Um very well like you if you can buy metal pans that have a non-stick coating try it you know buy one that is a reputable brand that has uh that doesn’t have the pfas type, substances in the non-stick coating i think if you can avoid non-stick that’s the best and that will come up when we talk about ceramic and glass pans that’s one of the reasons why i like i do prefer them. But metal pans are durable. They’re not going to break when you drop them. They conduct heat really well. They’re light. They’re easy to handle. They’re just the most simple and accessible and affordable option for most people.

Alison:
When you say look after them, care for them well, what do you mean?

Elly:
Well, any metal pan that has a non-stick coating, from what I’ve read.

Elly:
Nonstick coatings, you know, they vary in quality and some are more sort of friendly than others in terms of the chemicals that they use in these coatings. But from what I understand with any nonstick coating on a loaf tin or a cake tin or anything for that matter, is that you need to look after them in terms of not scratching them. So it’s when the coatings are damaged, that’s when that surface is broken and there is a chance then that anything that you might not want in your food could leach into your food. But my understanding is that as long as those surfaces are in good condition and they’re not scratched, so you never want to put a knife down the side of your tin to get your bread out or anything like that, just don’t scratch them. And the other thing with nonstick pans is I just treat them the same way as any other pan. I don’t treat them like they’re nonstick because for me, I don’t think they are. I still grease my pans, flour my pans. I always have that layer of grease and fat or oil of some type and sometimes a bit of a flour coating on top of that too. And that just gives a nice barrier that’s going to protect the pan but also give more of a barrier between your dough and the pan as well. I feel the same about that. Yeah, you never have to damage your pan.

Alison:
I always grease mine and plough them because then you don’t have to put a knife down the side of it to

Elly:
Get it out. Exactly, exactly.

Alison:
So you’re less likely to damage it.

Elly:
And I think if anybody’s listening who’s had that experience, keep listening because we are going to go through, Like the tips that Alison and I will be able to share in this, you will never, ever, ever have to dig out a loaf out of a bread tin of any type ever again. Yay! Yeah, there are tricks to it though. There are tricks that not everybody knows about and some that I’ve never heard anybody talk about, but I’ve figured out and especially for glass pans. So yeah, keep your knives away from all of your pans if you can. Yeah, cool.

Alison:
Okay. Can you talk about why you’re buying pears and what you do with the pears of Chase? Because I think that’s quite interesting.

Elly:
Yeah. Well, part of it is just, I just, I don’t know. I feel like they’re lonely if there’s just one of them. Part of it is just an aesthetic thing that I have. I just feel like I just need a pair, a matching pair of things, which is, you know, totally unnecessary. But the other reason for that is if you have a metal bread pan that has a really nice flat edge on it, like the handles at the side, sometimes it goes all the way around, but usually it’s just a flat edge that sticks out on the two short edges. If those are nice and flat then you can invert one pan over the top of the other so you have you put your bread dough in in one pan and then put the empty tin the pear over the top and you can clip the two together and that’s a really nice way to make a really affordable simple, steam oven basically and.

Alison:
Would you proof like that as well would you proof it yes

Elly:
Absolutely Absolutely, absolutely. Because when you’re proofing your dough, it’s really important that you don’t lose any moisture. And depending on your environment, you might live in a high humidity area like me where it’s not such a big deal. But if you live in a dry area or a desert or something and your air humidity is very low, you don’t want the surface of your dough to dry out. So always cover it. Sometimes I just put my bread tin in a big container or I just put anything over the top. But another bread tin that fits over the top really neatly without too much of an air gap between the two pans, that’s a really good trick. And it keeps the dough moist for the proofing and it keeps it nice and steamy in the baking as well.

Alison:
Yeah. Okay. Do you clip with a bulldog clip?

Elly:
Yeah.

Alison:
One each side.

Elly:
I don’t know if they’re called that in other places. But we call them, what do we call them? I think we call them bulldog clips. They’re just those, they’re all metal. There’s no plastic or anything. They’re completely metal and they’re just clips that you use for big, thick pieces, thick… Lumps of paper, I guess. And, you know, you can buy them in stationary shops. And I just use two of them. I’ve got the same two big clips that I’ve been using in the oven for, I don’t know, 15, maybe 20 years, a long time. And there’s no damage has ever happened to them. They just get baked and then they come out again and they cool off and you just put them in the drawer.

Alison:
The only thing I have to remember when I put one tin on top of the other, which is not very often because I don’t buy in pairs, is that I have to reorganise the shelves in my oven. No, I don’t. It’s just you, Ellie. I thought it was. I have to reorganise my oven before I start because I have to take one of the shelves out because usually it’s high, it’s too high, then to slide that in. So I need to make sure before I preheat the oven that I’ve taken that top shelf out so I’ve got enough room for them to fit in.

Elly:
Right, yes, yes.

Alison:
Okay, now I’ve got three metal pans. One is just a large, normal, two pound, I think, a metal pan. One’s a small one. And the other one is a Pullman pan. Could you talk a little bit about what’s so special about Pullman pans?

Elly:
Yeah. Well, Pullman pans are produced, I think, there are different companies selling Pullman type pans. But the most popular Pullman pans sold these days are made by the company called USA Pans in the US. And they’re really, they’re almost right angles. They’re a very square shaped pan. They’re very tall. They do come in different sizes, but I think I have the medium size. They’ve got very tall sides and they have a lid that slides on the top that gives a flat lid. So if you get just the right amount of bread dough in there and you work it all out and you’re really looking for this you can make square shaped bread in a Pullman pan because it has that lid and with the right amount of dough it will fill up and push up against the top of the lid and make that top, top section of the of the bread flat so that’s the main reason that people like Pullman pans because they’re after that square sandwich shape I think really that’s one of the main benefits for them I think the other benefit from the perspective of the USA pan brand of Pullman pan is that the one you’ve got too no.

Alison:
Mine’s I could when I bought one initially I couldn’t get those sent across. I don’t even know who makes mine. It’s a non-stick one. It does the job. It’s great, but it’s not a USA one.

Elly:
It’s the same thing. They’re just square. So it’s all right angles with a flat lid on the top that just slides over. Yeah, same thing. But the other benefit, I haven’t tried any other brand other than the USA Pan brand, but the USA Pan Pullman pans are very heavy they’re pretty heavy gauge steel so they’re pretty good quality and they do seem to hold the heat really well as far as i know they’re just uh like a carbon steel underneath and they do actually have a non-stick coating on them not everybody knows that but the usa pans they definitely have a coating on them okay um but they’re just the ones that i’ve got they’re a very high quality pan, they’re really rough, like they’re very rigid and you’re not going to dent them or damage them in any way.

Alison:
Mine’s not dented, but I’m not sure mine’s steel underneath. It seems maybe a bit too, I don’t know, a bit too heavy, a bit too light rather for steel. Right. I don’t know, but it works. And like you said to me earlier, I think the reason why I like it is not just because it creates that 90 degree angle but you can easily use it for proofing because then you just put the lid on and you’ve got your like your double tin you’ve got your enclosed space yeah and

Elly:
Because they’re quite tall you can you can do that too you know because they’re quite tall you don’t have to make a a dough that.

Alison:
That that

Elly:
Rises all the way up to the top to that flat lid you can is that what you do you just.

Alison:
Yeah so i i have never used my pullman to try and make a completely square loaf. I bought it when I just, I can’t be bothered, you know, I don’t need a square loaf. I like actually the dome on the top of the loaves. I think it’s nice. And I don’t want to restrict a bread, you know, maybe I’d get the calculations right using your wonderful formula, but I just, I like to let my bread do what my bread wants to do. Yes, absolutely. The reason I bought one is because they’re really good for baking 100% rye loaves. So when I started putting together the information for my course, Sourdough Rye Bread Mastering the Basics, I experimented with lots of different bread tins for rye. Rye really likes to have something to climb up, a kind of a structure to climb up, and the straight edges really help it. Aesthetically, rye looks really nice when it’s square because traditionally rye breads have been made that way. And then in addition, rye breads, my rye sandwich bread that I make is very, very high hydration. You can’t shape it into a loaf with your hands. You literally push it in the tin with a spatula. And because of that, the square structure just gives it a structure which helps it look and rise really well. Yes. So that’s why I started with them. I remember…

Alison:
When I first started researching them, I thought, why is it called Pullman? And I remember reading that the trains, traditionally trains are called Pullman. I still see Pullman trains in England. We went up to London, Victoria last week and there was a really beautifully decked out Pullman train about to pull out, you know, with the crystal chandeliers and white tablecloths and everything. And so Pullman were a type of train and they needed to bake bread actually on the train and in order to fit as many breads as possible into their oven they designed this square tin so that the tins could stack next to each other and on top of each other That

Elly:
Is so smart.

Alison:
In the oven That’s great Which is really smart I love that So I’m not stacking them But I would recommend a Pullman if you want to make rye certainly because I think that rye does really, really well in them Yes Yes,

Elly:
The point just quickly, I just want to say, yeah, there’s a big difference because the sides, the vertical sides on a Pullman pan are much longer or taller than the width of the base. Whereas a lot of bread loaf pans, they have a much wider base with shorter sides. So that’s the difference. It’s a really nice tall, tall loaf. Yeah, yeah.

Alison:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let’s move to ceramic. And baking pans. So I have to say baking pans, not baking tins, because obviously a ceramic tin doesn’t quite work. Baking pans. So ceramic pans are my absolute favourite. I just love them. I think they’re beautiful. I think they make an amazing crust. But we do know that they’re more pricey and we do know that they break more easily. That’s not so much of a problem here in England because the floors aren’t really that hard in Italy. The floors were all terracotta tiles. So I was terrified about dropping my ceramic cookware because that would be the end of it. They do take longer to heat up, but they hold the heat really well. And listeners to the podcast know that I have an Emil Henry Baker that I use really for virtually all my loaves. Rob loves to even put the rye in there. even though, you know, it doesn’t have that 90 degree angle and he loves it in there because he loves what it does to the crust. Just does amazing things to the crust. Does he preheat?

Elly:
Do you preheat yours?

Alison:
No, and that’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about because I’ve seen you in one of your videos preheat a ceramic pan in Emil Henry and I have never done that. I always… Have the pan greased and floured when my dough is ready to go in for the proof. And so then I’m putting my dough in there and then I leave it to proof in there, preheat my oven, put it in cold. And it always seems to do the job, but maybe you could talk about how you use yours and the difference between you experience when you don’t preheat them and when you do preheat them. Could you talk about that yes

Elly:
I can and part of this is a bit more complex than it needs to be because i’ve got way way too many baking vessels um but um honestly i often will go for a metal tin if i want to proof my dough in the tin you know just take the very straightforward, root and grease the tin i will i will just use a metal tin for that and the reason for that is metal tins are more conductive. They heat up faster. So I think, I could be wrong, but I think I get a better oven spring from a metal tin if I’m proofing the dough in the tin, just because it will heat up a lot faster.

Alison:
I see, yeah.

Elly:
But, and I have the luxury of having these Emile Henry bakers, which are probably superfluous to my needs, but I got them because I couldn’t help myself. Actually, I think you inspired me, Alison. We were talking about them and I thought, oh, I really have to have one of those.

Elly:
I had been looking at them for years anyway. I got one. But I have found that particularly with 100% whole grain sourdough, if anybody has experienced with this kind of bread making, you will know that it is the most challenging type of bread making you can do. And I take my hat off to anybody who gives it a crack. And you’re looking for as much help as you can get to get the best oven spring, to get the lightest possible loaf because otherwise this can be pretty dense bread depending on flours and techniques that you’re using. So if I’m using a ceramic baking dish of any type, whether it’s an Emile Henri or any other type, I do like to preheat them. I get them really super hot, like turn my oven up as hot as I can pretty much, at least about 220, 230 degrees Celsius. so I think that’s about four, I forget what that is in Fahrenheit.

Elly:
I pretty much use them the same way as a lot of people use cast iron Dutch ovens for freeform loaves. So I preheat the baker and then I proofed my dough in a banneton or a proofing basket or inside another tin with a nonstick baking paper liner and then when the dough is proofed and the ceramic baker is preheated, I lift the dough into that and it just gives it that extra burst of really high heat right at the beginning.

Alison:
Do you put the paper in with it when you’ve lifted it out?

Elly:
Yeah. Well, it depends on what I use to proof the dough. So if I’m clever and I feel like faffing about with it, I will use a banneton. Like you don’t have to use paper. There’s all sorts of ways you can get dough into a baking dish. You can invert it onto a little appeal and then slide it in or use all those methods that most of us know. or if you want to use paper.

Alison:
Just lift

Elly:
It in and leave the paper in and bake it with the paper.

Alison:
Yeah okay I’ve got another question so what about greasing and flouring that container that you’re preheating do you not do that

Elly:
Um, no, no. I think I’ve only done that once and the dough didn’t stick. I haven’t continued with that method, not because the dough stuck or there was any issues with it, but because it’s just a pain. I’d prefer to just use an easier method, to be honest, than bannetons and peels and sliding the dough in and all of that. But no, I think it’s probably better with cast iron and other materials, but you can get away with putting, depending what’s on the dough and what sort of surface is on the dough, you can put dough straight into an ungreased, very, very hot ceramic baker and it won’t stick. But there are tricks to that. I will always put some sort of coating on the dough. So if you’re proofing a dough in a banneton, I always really fairly heavily dredge the banneton with – sometimes I use rice flour, brown rice flour. I put the brown rice through my mock meal because any gluten-free flour has got no gluten in it. It’s not going to be very sticky.

Elly:
And on the underside of the flour, I will sprinkle some flour or it might be some seeds or it might be some semolina or something like that and sort of pat that down on the dough before I put it on the peel and slide it in. And that little coating of flour or seeds or whatever it is, that just gives enough of a barrier between the sticky dough and the hot, dry pan that it will form a crust and not stick.

Alison:
That’s really useful because, I mean, I have, like you alluded to, I have read about people using cast iron bakers without actually greasing and flouring them, just using the seasoning, good seasoning. It has to be, you know, have to have a really well seasoned pan. But I haven’t read specifically about anyone doing that with ceramic. So I can see then the options are you know either to proof it in surrounded by parchment paper or baking paper and then literally lift that up and put it in or to try these kind of tricks that you know you’re really flowering your bannerton you’re perhaps making a coating with something else and then when that ceramic pan is really hot the the chemistry happens immediately to stop it actually creating a stickiness that’s really interesting that’s right it okay to

Elly:
Be honest though none of that is necessary this is all sort of next level stuff that i honestly can’t remember the last time i did it to be really honest because most people when they’re making bread there’s a million other things we have to do in a day and i.

Alison:
I don’t

Elly:
Bother with that uh for me i’d just use the paper sling method that would be easier for me and I’ve got some nice compostable non-stick baking paper that I use but I use it sparingly.

Alison:
But you know it

Elly:
Just depends on on how much time you’ve got how much effort you want to put into it.

Alison:
That’s the important part you know usually most of the people listening to this are just doing like we both are you know loads of other things at the same time for me I used to have a banneton when we lived in Italy, but maybe I didn’t dry it properly. Maybe I left it in a damp part of the house. It went green and moldy, so I threw it away. And I just haven’t got to buying another one yet. So I use my Emile Henry, you know, without a banneton because I don’t have one. And I’m happy with the spring that I get when it’s cool. I’m sure perhaps if I was trying to do a really nice bread for a guest or something, you know, I could practice that method and then I could come up with something that’s even better. But it’s about how to fit it in to our lifestyle. And I feel like the Henry gives me amazing breads without having to give out a lot more work. I just want to talk about the two different types because I’ve only got the smaller one. It’s not actually that small, but it’s small compared to the other one. And it’s got holes in the top. and

Alison:
The thing that I found with that is that if you cook it in an oven with a fan on, the air tends to go through the top of the fan and you end up with a lighter patch on the top of your bread, probably on one of those holes, depending where the fans are in your oven. And so if I don’t want that, I’m not bothered about that because the crust is lovely. But if I don’t want that, I make sure I cook it in an oven without a fan, which takes longer and probably I’ll not notch the temperature up a little bit because it’s not got that circulating air continually moving the heat around. But if I do that, then it doesn’t create that little mark on the top. When I’m proofing in the Henry, I cover those two holes with a bit of aluminium foil that I just use over and over again to keep it completely as airtight as possible. You’ve got the larger one too. So talk about how you use those two in your kitchen briefly.

Elly:
Yeah, I never cover up the holes on my smaller one. They did annoy me a little bit when I first got it, and I wished that it didn’t have them, but they don’t seem to dry the bread out too much. One thing I do is I will give the dough, if I’m proofing the dough in the Emile Henry with the holes in the lid, I will give, actually I do this for a lot of my doughs, I will give it a light spray of water before I put the lid on, before it starts the proofing, like just after I put it in, And that just helps keep a bit more moisture on that top surface of the dough. Although proper sourdough bakers will say, don’t do that because you weaken the nice gluten surface of your dough. But I think whole grain sourdough bakers, we’re talking a different language. So let’s not be worried about that. But I do that and that helps retain a bit of moisture. The other thing is I, and this goes for all of my baking. And I want to ask you, do you bake with the lid on the whole time?

Alison:
That’s a really good question.

Elly:
Because I take mine off.

Alison:
Mostly I bake with the lid on the whole time. But sometimes if I take the loaf out a little bit earlier because I happen to be in the kitchen at that time or because it’s a slightly bigger loaf and I’m not 100% sure of how long it’s going to take. If I happen to then look at the loaf and think, oh, that’s not quite done. It needs another 10 minutes or another 12 minutes. I’ll take the lid off and put it back in with the lid off to just extra brown the top. But not usually. You do it, sounds like, routinely. I do that.

Elly:
Yes, yes. I nearly always do that. I don’t particularly time it. Like I sort of, I’m not too pedantic about it, but I nearly always set my timer for what I think roughly the bread will take. because different breads, different pans, they all have various slightly different baking times. And then I nearly always take the lid off and go, oh, it’s a bit pale on the top, and I just leave the lid off and it usually goes back in for another 10 or 15 minutes. Okay. That’s how it rolls. And I find it a bit hard to get a nicely cooked top crust without that final bake. Really?

Alison:
See, I don’t. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

Elly:
Although I think I’ve probably done one or two videos where I have left the lid on the whole time. I’ve been doing this for so long that I go through phases.

Alison:
Yeah, I know.

Elly:
So I feel like a little bit of a liar because I’ve probably at some point said, oh, I leave the lid on the whole time. But by and large, over a very, very long period of time, I generally like to take the lid off for the last 10 minutes or so.

Alison:
Yeah. Okay. What about your larger, Emile Henry?

Elly:
Oh, yes. The larger one, it’s my favourite. It’s of the ceramic pans. It is my favourite. I love the shape of it. Rather than it having right angles for the, you know, in the bottom section, it has a round base. So it’s very, very large. Unfortunately, because of the size of it, I don’t use it a lot. It takes at least double the amount of dough that I would normally bake with. It’s a very, very big baker, but it’s got a really high top, so you never, ever have to worry about your bread springing up and hitting the top unless you’ve used all white flour and commercial yeast. It’s just got this gorgeous round shape. I love the roundness of the dough, of the bread. So when you slice the bread, it just has a beautiful, more rounded cross-section shape. And so it’s… Just really an aesthetic thing.

Alison:
Talking about bread hitting the roof. Sometimes in the Emil Henry, our breads do hit the roof, particularly when we do a larger rye loaf. So I’ve taken, I always grease and flour the Emil Henry. We’ll talk about that in a little while. But I’ve actually taken to greasing and flouring just the first kind of third of the lid as well because I’ve had situations where my rye bread has risen and literally glued the lid. to the base. So now I try and remember to grease and flour just a bit of the lid as well. So if that happens,

Elly:
Then that’s not a problem. I do that too. If I think there’s any chance it’s going to hit the lid, I will grease the lid. And if I’m using that two tin trick that I mentioned before with one tin on top of the other and the clips, some of them you don’t need the clips, but if you’re, yeah, you don’t always need the clips. But if I’m doing that, I will often grease the sides and around the rim of the top tin because that’s where the bread underneath is going to push up against the sides of the inverted tin over the top. Yeah, it’s a good idea.

Alison:
Wonderful. Okay, this is really geeky. I like it.

Elly:
Yeah.

Alison:
Okay, so if anyone listening is thinking about getting an Emile Henry or as Ellie says, Emile Honoré, I should be more French. Honoré. We have a link which will enable you to support the podcast without paying any more and I will put that in the show notes and you can go and get yourself one of those so I just want to say I’ve got another non-Emile Henry ceramic pan yes it’s Pullman in shape so it’s got the 90 degrees at the bottom it used to have a lid and so I could have made those sandwich loaves and if I wanted to but Gable broke the lid unfortunately but I do still use it it’s longer and thinner so actually if you make a rye, not in the Pullman, it looks really nice in this ceramic because it’s sort of long and thin. But I tent it with aluminium foil when I use it to make sure it’s kind of got a lid. Do you have ceramic pans that aren’t Emile Henry?

Elly:
I absolutely do. And I probably love them even more. And both of them, were probably under $15 from charity shops. Oh, excellent. So don’t – I mean, the Emil Henry Bakers are beautiful and they’re a specialty item that – but honestly, they are a real luxury and some of the quality of things that I’ve bought secondhand, you know, hunting around antique shops and things, you don’t need to buy one of these fancy new things. They’re so expensive. They’re nice if you can afford it and you want to pay for it But I do have an absolutely beautiful Dalton brand I don’t know if that’s related to Royal Dalton But it is Dalton And it’s a round ceramic dish shape It’s basically a casserole pot It’s not designed for bread baking at all With a round domed glass lid Borosilicate glass lid.

Elly:
And I just love the round shape. I use that like I would a Dutch oven. I preheat that, put my dough in that and it bakes a beautiful round bowl loaf and I also have another little round one that is actually a flame-proof, I think it was probably made for hot pots and things like that but it’s made in Japan. It’s a Japanese flame-proof ceramic dish that has a little lid as well. And I like using that too, but it’s a bit smaller. And I do tend to go for the bigger ones because I don’t like the lid. You don’t want your dough touching the lid if you can avoid it. So I tend to – anything that has a really nice high-domed lid is always preferable to me for that reason.

Alison:
Yeah, I get that. But just listening to your Dalton one made me think that when we were living with Rob’s mum, when we first came back from Italy, she has a ceramic kind of casserole dish like that, a round one. And I used it all the time. I had a silicon loaf tin with me, which we’ll talk about in a minute, and I didn’t use it. So I used Rob’s mum’s kind of casserole, ceramic casserole dish, and it worked really well.

Elly:
A casserole dish is great. I did a video so long ago. It’s one of my oldest videos. And I’d completely forgotten about it, but… I talk about different baking pans and I’ve got some of my old casserole dishes and things. I talk about them in that video. You can use anything that’s oven safe. You can use for bread. Yeah, exactly. So just look around and if there’s a shape that appeals to you that it’s got a nice height to it, you can bake your bread in it.

Alison:
Yeah, okay. Before we move on to glass, I just want to talk about unglazed ceramic. I don’t have any experiments with this. Do you have any unglazed ceramic dishes?

Elly:
Not currently. I mean, the smaller Emile Henry Baker has an unglazed inside of the lid. Yeah, correct. That’s really the only thing I’ve got. The Japanese one I’ve got is not glazed, but it’s got more of a non-porous surface. I don’t know what you call that. No, I used to have a Schlemmerthoff, which is a relative of a Rommerthoff. I’m not sure if I’m saying that correctly, but the German style baker. And I think we were going to be talking about that a little bit further along, but I used to have one of those and they’re unglazed, but mine had a funny little divot thing in the bottom that I think that the one I had was really meant for roasting meats. So it had this little raised section in the bottom for fat to drain off or whatever. And so it used to leave this funny shape in the bottom of my bread. So I don’t have it anymore. but they work great. Okay. They work pretty well for me.

Alison:
You’re right. In the after show, we’ve got a specific question on unglazed ceramic that’s coming from one of the listeners. So we’ll deal with that then. Okay. Let’s move on to glass. I know you’ve got a lot to say about glass. So I don’t have any glass. I used to have a glass tin in the past, but the dough stuck to it. And then I don’t, I think maybe I borrowed it or I don’t have it anymore. So talk to us about glass.

Elly:
Mm. I think glass pans, if you’re confident with your mobility and your motor skills and you can handle them, I think they would be in my top three. I just love glass bread pans. Again, for me, a lot of it does come down to the aesthetic of it. I just love the look of Pyrex. I went through a phase of collecting a bit of vintage Pyrex glassware and bakeware, but I try not to do that anymore. But I have some French Pyrex loaf pans, and I have one American Pyrex loaf pan, which has got a beautiful little fluted edge on it. And they’re just so gorgeous. But they bake bread very, very well as well, which I don’t think people know too much about that. I think they’re really underrated for baking. And one of the main reasons for that is that they do – your bread dough is more likely to stick in them. But once you know the tricks, super easy. Okay.

Alison:
So the tip for – I’m ready to learn.

Elly:
Yeah. Yeah. The tip for baking in glassware is you do need to grease them. Step one, you do need to grease them really well. And I would highly recommend greasing the pan with whatever you choose to use. You could use olive oil or butter or any fat that you like.

Elly:
And then if you want an extra nonstick effect, which if you’re not confident, then go for the extra. Sprinkle a little bit of flour on top of that. and I was actually talking to my dad last night. I rang him to pick his brain because he’s a metal expert and I wanted to ask him a couple of questions about metal things.

Elly:
And we were talking about it and he said that his mum, he can remember her using glass pans and she did the same thing with all of her pans. She got butter on a little piece of paper and would just rub the butter around, put some flour in the bottom of the tin, tip the tin around so the butter got and then tip out the excess and then put the and and that always works but and this isn’t just for glass it does go for all pans but it’s especially important important with glass what goes wrong is that people will grease their pans perfectly but when they’re putting their dough into the pan they are making the shape of the dough a little bit often it’s not exactly the right size to fit the pan so when the dough gets put in the pan it rubs on the sides of the pan and it pushes the grease down with the dough so you end up with this section on the side of raw bread dough that’s touching the piece of glass that has barely got any grease left on it because it got pushed down.

Elly:
So when I fill my glass pans, and I think I showed this in that video, or I talked about it anyway… I sort of, I have my bread dough on the bench and I have my glass pan sort of parallel side by side, like the number 11, one beside each other. And I sort of eyeball it and I go, okay, I need it to be roughly about that length. And then when I lift the dough up to put it in the pan, I give it a nice little squeeze and make it quite a bit more narrow than the glass pan. And then I plop it in without it touching the sides. And then once it’s in, then I sort of push it down and it spreads out to touch the sides. So if you do that and you grease the pan well, that you will maintain that nice grease layer all the way around and it will not rub off and you will never have any sticking of anything.

Alison:
So I remember I remember doing that when I was filming one of the videos for my rye course trying to get the bread the right shape to fit in the pullman pan which of course has those high sides so it’s not as forgiving as what a wider pan which has a wider base and shorter sides yes and it’s kind of I mean the more you do it you’ve got to have a confidence you’ve literally you’ve got to do it confidently you can’t do it half-heartedly no you’ve got to practice a few times and you might mess it up a few times, but then you kind of get a sense of it and then you’ve got to be confident and put it in and let it pull down.

Elly:
And the other tip for that is don’t worry about the length too much. Like often when I’m doing it and some of my does, they’re a bit over fermented, they’re a bit over hydrated, they’re not very strong, like they’re a bit floppy. So when I pick it up, they bend in the middle and the ends flop down, but it doesn’t matter. Just let the ends flop in first and then you put the middle part in yeah it all comes out it all works out.

Alison:
Yeah it’ll sort itself out when it’s in the pan yeah

Elly:
But just don’t let the sides of the dough rub down the sides of the pan as it’s going in yeah.

Alison:
Okay yeah for glass do you cook at the same temperature as ceramic we haven’t talked about temperatures yet between ceramic metal and glass

Elly:
I bake everything at the same temperature okay as hot as i can i will say for anything with a And anything with a nonstick, anything nonstick or silicon for me has to be under 220 because all of the documentation that you get with these pans and anything you read online, they all say bake under 230 Celsius. So my rule is 220. You don’t want these materials degrading by using temperatures that are too high. So that’s one reason to not use non-stick or silicon. But if you’re using those, definitely watch the temperature. But everything other than that, so glass, glass, Actually, we haven’t talked about aluminium pans, but aluminium counts for this as well. Glass, ceramic, aluminium or cast iron. For me, the hotter the better.

Alison:
Okay. Seriously, what would you go up to?

Elly:
Oh, 230, 240, 240. My oven doesn’t actually go that high.

Alison:
So I’m just doing the calculation. 230 is 428 Fahrenheit and 230 is 446 Fahrenheit, so like 450. Okay. I mean, you

Elly:
Wouldn’t want to put it into a pizza oven that you’ve had a roaring fire going in or anything like that. I’m talking domestic ovens and my oven is just a domestic electric oven with a fan setting. And so I just, you know, it’s not a fancy oven or anything and it doesn’t get ridiculously hot. So, yeah, not extremely hot, but a very hot oven for a domestic oven.

Alison:
Yeah. Okay. I usually start most of my breads at 220, but I made a Borodinsky two days ago. That’s kind of the more complicated Russian rye bread with a scald. And I start that at 230. dirty. So again, like you, I like to try and have as much heat as possible in my breads. Yeah. Okay. Now I’ve got a note here to ask you about your microwave sourdough experiment. What’s that about?

Elly:
Oh, yes. This all relates to the high heat. The reason why you want high heat is because you will get a better oven spring, but you will also get a really good crust development. And I know that not everybody likes the look of a well-baked loaf of bread, but crust really does equal flavour. And having a caramelised, really well-done crust, particularly with 100% whole grain sourdough bread, they need to be cooked properly. To a very well-done level for them to be cooked thoroughly inside because they’re quite dense generally. And you will get so much more flavour out of a loaf of bread that has a really nice crust. And I know this because I tried – I baked bread in a microwave once just to see if it would work. I know. I was thinking that’s not very ancestral kitchen.

Alison:
Well, it’s all right. We can poke holes in it.

Elly:
Yeah, yeah. but I did try it out. This was years ago and it baked the bread but it came out like a big dumpling, and the internal crumb was fine. You know, the crumb was fine. The flavor inside was actually very bland because, and that taught me a lot because when you bake a loaf of bread in a regular oven, in a metal tin or ceramic or something and you get a really nice brown crust, The flavour, I didn’t know this until the microwave experiment, but the flavour and the browning of the crust permeates the whole bread. The bread tastes good inside, but the microwave bread did not taste good inside. It tasted bland all over because there was no bursting of caramelised flavours, rushing through the whole thing. So go for a nice dark crust.

Alison:
Because some traditions have, some, you know, cultures have traditions of steaming bread, like the Chinese and that, and Boston bread. Have you ever done that?

Elly:
I have made all sorts of various things, but I guess the microwaves thing, it’s pretty much the same.

Alison:
Yeah, it’s a similar thing,

Elly:
Isn’t it? In a cover. Yeah. Different things for different purposes. You know, like steamed buns and things have red bean paste in the middle and that they’re meant to be soft and delicate and they’ve probably got other things in the dough and they’re made with refined white flours and it’s all just different things. Yeah, different purposes. But flavour in bread definitely comes from the crust.

Alison:
For sure. Thank you. We shall remember that. Okay.

Elly:
So I’m very passionate, as you can tell.

Alison:
We are going on and on about this. We’re quite behind time. I’ll stop talking about crust now. Anyway, we shall carry on. Next, we’re going to talk about silicon, but let’s go to an ad break first. Okay, silicon. So I don’t think we’re going to say particularly very good things about this. Do you want to just talk a little bit about silicon, Annie?

Elly:
Yes. I used to like silicon. I had a couple of pans, but I don’t have them anymore. And the reason for that is they don’t conduct the heat very well. There is a reason why you can buy silicon oven mitts and they’re quite popular. They’re good insulators. And you don’t want to bake your bread in anything that is insulated from heat. You want it to be very heat conductive. um so that my breads baked in silicon always had an underbaked crust on the on the parts that the silicon was touching for me i just don’t like that lack of crust um and the other thing too is when you bake with silicon over and over again eventually it can get this really weird sticky, texture i’ve experienced that you can’t get rid of and i’m very sort of a little bit sensory sensitive to stuff like that I just I hate the feel of it so I I abandoned the silicon for baking for that reason.

Alison:
Okay yeah so I have one silicon loaf tin and in the past I found it useful when we’re traveling um but what the downside of that is I make high hydration loaves like you because that works really well with whole grain sourdough and when I put them in the silicon the sides don’t stay upright they just flop and so I end up with a loaf that’s kind of halfway between a pan loaf and a free-form loaf but looks really kind of icky yeah um Sometimes I’ve been in, I’ve stayed in places where there’s no tin at all, no container at all. And I’ve been pleased to have that silicone. But as I explained when we stayed with Rob’s mum this summer, last summer it was now, I chose her blue ceramic dish over that silicone pan that I had with me. So I do have silicone muffin tins and I use those on the occasions that I bake muffins, which is not very often.

Elly:
Do you grease them?

Alison:
No, I don’t. No, not at all. I just, and they always pop out. So, yeah, that’s how we feel about silicon. Let’s move on from silicon. We’re not fans.

Elly:
It’s fine. It’s okay.

Alison:
It does the job, perhaps.

Elly:
It does do the job, yeah. I don’t really have anything against it. I just, it’s just a personal thing more than anything.

Alison:
Yeah, you’d rather use something else if you can. Yeah. Definitely. And like you said earlier, you know, you can go to charity shops and op shops you’d call thrift stores, Americans call it. And look for containers. They don’t have to look like a loaf pan. You know, you can find Pyrex dishes, which are circular, which people use as casserole dishes. And it might be that you’re in a rented holiday home and they don’t have a loaf tin, but they have a Pyrex casserole dish. That’s exactly right. And if you grease it in the way that you’ve just explained, then that can be your bread container.

Elly:
I’ve baked bread in holiday homes in saucepans, oven-safe saucepans. You know, anything will do. As long as it’s safe to be put in the oven, you can use it.

Alison:
Yeah. I’d have to take a screwdriver and take the handle off maybe. I’m now thinking. I’ll just put it in,

Elly:
Handle it all. As long as it’s got a metal.

Alison:
Have you got a screwdriver? I’ve got to take the handle off. Yeah, your one’s got a metal handle, I assume, if you’ve seen it. And then it can go in, can’t it?

Elly:
Yes.

Alison:
Yeah. I think maybe you’re going to a higher calibre of holiday place than I am. Non-stick and plastic handles.

Elly:
I don’t know. Possibly.

Alison:
Let’s talk about cast iron. Have you got cast iron bakers? I don’t know the answer to that.

Elly:
I have one enamel cast iron baker that I’ve had. Can you talk.

Alison:
About cast iron and what’s good about that and what’s bad about that?

Elly:
Well, they’re great like other metal pans. Cast iron is obviously it’s metal. It’s iron. It’s different to carbon steel, which is what the bread tin, the normal loaf pans are made of. Iron as a metal is very brittle without carbon added to it. I got this info from Dad last night. And that’s why they have to be made so thick. So they’re very thick because iron on its own is brittle. It needs to be strengthened. So they’re very thick, very, very heavy.

Elly:
They won’t heat the bread inside them very quickly because they’re so thick. They’ll take a while to heat up. But they do heat very evenly. So most of the time, if I’m using my cast iron Dutch oven, it’ll be a preheat situation. I’ve never baked bread. Anything in it without preheating it. Having said that, you could, if you had a cast iron pan of some sort and you wanted to proof your dough in it and bake it in there, you could do that without preheating the pan. I would just say slightly under-proof your dough because it’s going to be slower to heat up because of the thickness of the cast iron. Cast iron too, another thing Dad said was that, But iron without carbon in it is a different molecular structure. It has more lumpy structure, which is why cast iron is really good for seasoning. So you can heat it up and season it and it will hold the grease better because of the actual structure of the metal, which is fascinating.

Alison:
Interesting. To me. cast iron pan but not a baker the um the problem i find with cast iron is that it’s very heavy yeah the ceramic tin is quite heavy but my lodge cast iron pan i keep on the stove is really heavy and i can imagine a baker would be quite something now i know that you can get spun iron there’s a foundry here in the uk in staffordshire called netherton foundry and they make spun iron bakeware cookware kind of everything and i’m keen to try to um get hold of perhaps some of those and try them they’re on the expensive side but i’m interested to see the difference between spun iron and cast iron um now of course many people have got dutch ovens that are cast iron some of them enameled some of them aren’t and that’s just a case of you know what what we were talking about casserole dishes you can use the ceramic casserole dish but you could also use a cast iron enameled or not enameled casserole dish,

Elly:
Which is kind of the same thing. The only difference really is that you don’t have to season and grease an enameled one. You know, a regular cast iron will rust if it’s not cared for. So that’s the only difference really.

Alison:
In some of your videos, I have seen you’ve got a kind of a big roaster thing and you use it kind of as a surrounding cage for putting a loaf tin inside. Could you talk a bit about that?

Elly:
Yeah, I’ve had that for years now and I use it all the time. It’s the only thing that actually lives in my oven all the time. It’s a Baccarat brand, which is an Australian kitchenware company. Unfortunately, they don’t sell them anymore. I think some companies are sort of trying to make versions of them. So if you look around, you might be able to find something similar. But it’s basically a large, long, oblong-ish, rounded, rectangle-type shape baking dish. It’s actually cast aluminium with a stone non-stick, you know, one of those modern non-stick stone type coatings on it. I think they call them granite ware or something like that. And it has a lid that can be.

Elly:
It’s quite deep. The bottom part is quite deep and the lid is quite narrow, but it can be used either way. So the lid can be used as the base or the base can be used as the base, if you know what I mean. So I use that in two ways. I use it just preheated in the oven. And then if I’m not doing the two tin trick, because not all of my bread tins have a lip on them where I can put another tin over the top. I will use that as a small oven inside the oven, really, and I’ll put my whole bread tin in there and I’ll spray some water in there and that just makes it nice and steamy for the bake. And the other way that I use it is for longer freeform loaves. And in that case, I turn it upside down and I use the shallow lid as the base and the big domed bottom part as the lid. And I’ll preheat it, I will have my bread proofed in a banneton or whatever.

Elly:
And I will put the dough onto just that flat part and then put the dough, kind of like a cloche, I will put that tall one over the top and that is a beautiful way to make a nice long free-form loaf because most of the time we’re making free-form loaves, we’re doing it in a round Dutch oven, that’s what most people have But I really love longer, more narrow, more sort of standard loaf-shaped free-form loaves. So if you can find something long with a bit of length and a bit more narrow to it with a nice lid like that.

Alison:
They’re great for putting bread teams in. Sounds like a really versatile piece of equipment.

Elly:
Because it’s cast aluminium, it’s very light as well. And a lot of people following my YouTube channel are older people who are, you know, retirees who are learning baking and they don’t want to be heavy cast iron pots and pans. So they’ve been quite popular. Yeah.

Alison:
Okay. Let’s just go back a bit to carbon steel and what your dad said. So are you saying that most metal tins that we buy, they’re either aluminium or they’re carbon steel, is that right?

Elly:
Yeah, from what I can gather and from what I asked Dad about… Aluminium is very, very light. You will know if your tin is made of aluminium. Even very thin steel, you know, really cheap thin steel baking pans, usually they’ll have a non-stick coating. They will be a little bit heavier than the same thing made in aluminium. You can get anodised aluminium pans and a lot of people are afraid of aluminium, but aluminium is a great conductor. They they heat up super fast you don’t have to preheat anything with anything made of aluminium really they just like the most conductive of all of the types of metal, but if you grease them and treat them like a non-stick pan and have that nice barrier you won’t have any issues but most of the steel most of the non-stick coated modern steel bread pans that you get the run of the mill type that we all buy they are just steel they’re made of Carbon steel, which is iron with carbon added to it. That’s why they’re called carbon steel. And that makes them lighter than cast iron. They’re stronger, so they can get away with making them less thick than cast iron. That’s all just a bit of nerdy metal information.

Alison:
Tell us about your willow loaf tin that you’ve told me about.

Elly:
Oh, yes, that’s right. I was asking Dad about how were bread tins made before non-stick? Because I’ve got this vintage willow loaf tin that I bought in an antique shop and pre-non-stick era, like it looks like something my grandmother would have baked with. But it doesn’t rust like bare steel would. But it’s quite black. It’s been well used. And I make sure I keep it really dry. But Dad said the old steel pans before nonstick, they were carbon steel with a tin plated. So a very thin layer of tin over the top of the steel. And the tin acted as a bit of a barrier to stop them from rusting. A little bit as a precursor to nonstick coatings, I guess. He reckons that if you had a vintage pan like that now, there probably wouldn’t be a lot of tin left on it. You know, the tin would have more. And tin is a mineral dug out of the earth, just like iron ore is. So it’s just another type of tin. And I guess that’s where the term bread tins came from. For you and I, you know, anybody living in a place with a lot of English influence, we call them bread tins.

Alison:
I have a pair of earrings made from tin, which I got in Cornwall because there’s lots of tin mines in Cornwall that in the past were dug out. So I’m assuming a lot of that tin that went on bread pans came from the mines in Cornwall,

Elly:
Which is interesting. Yeah, so that’s where the term bread tin would have come from because they would have all been carbon steel with a very tin-plated coating over the top.

Alison:
Yeah, okay. Okay, so let’s move on a little bit. I want to ask you about what you love to bake with. So tell us out of all the things that we’ve talked about and all the loaf tins you have, what do you like to use? Do you use a lid? What size? How would you prefer to proof? What’s your kind of ideal method?

Elly:
I think my ideal is to bake in a ceramic or a glass pan because I love that really nice high heat and the great crust that you get from them. But slightly less exciting but more realistic everyday baking I will just use a steel bread tin. Baked inside my big roaster for the steam like that’s that’s just the go-to because, i don’t have to be careful with a with a steel tin if i’m if i’m a bit busy or absent-minded it doesn’t matter if i break it i’m generally more careful when i use my glass pans just because of what they are when you’re pulling a glass pan out of the oven you have to be more present because it’s more it’s they’re more slippery you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a good grip on them you’ve got to have good oven mitts. You just have to be a bit more careful. So day to day, just a steel pan of any type, really, whatever size and shape that you like, I’d go by what I like the look of.

Alison:
Okay. So it sounds like sometimes you’re having lids, like, you know, you’re using the baker or you’re using the ceramic, but sometimes with the glass, you wouldn’t have a lid then, would you?

Elly:
No, no. So for the glass, I put it inside that big, long baker.

Alison:
Ah, you do. Okay. So you’re always, you’ve always got some sort of cover, no matter what you’re using i

Elly:
Always want steam absolutely yeah just to help help the dough.

Alison:
It’s interesting that you talk about mitts and getting them out of the oven because i mean i like to bake with emil henry because it makes me have to be more present like you’re talking about you know when i when i’m baking with a aluminium with a pan the metal pan i don’t have to be and also it makes me feel like there’s kind of a ceremony around my bread because i love the tin so much it’s so beautiful it’s so And I know that I thought for a long time before I bought it because of the price, but it feels precious to me. And I know it’s going to bake the bread really, really well. And so it just adds a layer of specialness to something that could be routine. But I’m always really careful when I take it out of the oven because it’s not as slippery as glass, but I do have to be more careful than metal. And of course, when we lived in Italy, there’s a tiled floor directly underneath the oven. So I think actually mitts are really quite important because it’s easy for us to just think, oh, we can have a bog standard pair of mitts that is only padded on one side. The other side is just kind of fabric. But if you twist your hand the wrong way, you’re going to get burned if you happen to touch a bit that’s just got the fabric on. And I like to get the mitts that have kind of a silicon lines on them. So they’re kind of more grippy. so then when that comes into contact with my pan then I’ve just got a little bit more friction there that will help me when I’m taking it out of the tin.

Elly:
Yeah.

Alison:
Cool. Okay. Let’s talk about fitting dough into your pan. Now I know that there’s… There’s no standard sizing in pans. I remember when I was making the rye course, just trying to look at pans that were sold in Australia, in England, in Italy and in America and going, what, just you can’t make an equivalent. There’s no like this is, you know, two pounders, kilograms, sizes all over the place. It’s a nightmare. So frustrating. So if you’re trying to make a loaf that fits in your pan, particularly, you know, if it’s different, it’s going to be very different if it’s a whole grain loaf, the type that we’re making, rather than a white loaf. So talk about your method for figuring out how much dough to put in a pan for 100% whole grain recipes.

Elly:
Yeah, yeah. It’s not a foolproof system, but it does give you a good starting point. And I’ve tested this on all of my pans and nearly all of my breads, which are all reasonably similar, 100% whole grain, freshly milled sourdough bread.

Elly:
And what I do is I get a volume measurement of the pan. And some people do this by putting their empty bread tin on a scale and pouring water into it and taking the weight. because one gram of water takes up the volume of one milliliter, so you can measure it that way. But I like to just do the non-water way and just measure the width, the depth, and the length of my pan in centimetres. This might be a challenge for people not using the metric system, but I measure that in centimetres, and then I multiply those three measurements by each other to get the total volume, and that gives you the milliliter volume of the total pan. And then I have found that you want about 40% of that total volume amount. That’s roughly the flour amount for your recipe that you want. Okay, yeah. So this kind of requires you to then use a little bit of basic baker’s math, with baker’s percentages, mathematics, to be able to calculate the rest of your recipe from there. But…

Elly:
Once you get experience with this kind of bread baking, you know, you’ll get confident with sort of how much water you need in your recipes and salt and things like that don’t take up much volume. So it’s mostly the flour and the water and a little bit of starter. But, yeah, I found about a 40% flour amount of the total pan volume is pretty right for an average whole grain sourdough bread. If you are baking your bread with refined wheat flours, I should say, that have a far greater capacity to spring up in the oven just because they don’t have bran and all the other goodies that get in the way of the gluten development. Or if you’re using commercial yeast, you are going to get a dramatically different result and you would want a lot less flour in your recipe if you’re doing that because you’re just going to get a much bigger oven spring. Personally, I like to make my breads whole grain or sourdough. I’m quite happy to have all of the nutrients in the whole grain and a lovely sourdough fermented dough rather than have a great big fluffy airy loaf. So for whole grain sourdough, around about 40% flour of the tin volume. Yeah, that’s what you’re after.

Alison:
There is a wonderful video of you explaining all of that with like the maths and everything on your YouTube channel, which I will link to in the show notes. So if anyone isn’t perhaps so familiar with the metric system or wants to kind of see how Ellie’s kind of working it out, then go to the show notes and click on that link and watch Ellie show you herself how to do it in her own kitchen.

Elly:
If you’re a visual learner, just seeing me measure out the tins, that might be helpful.

Alison:
Makes a difference. Wonderful. Okay, we are going to talk about pizza next, but let’s go to an ad break first. Okay, pizza. Ellie, talk to us about how you bake pizza, the temperature, what pan, whether you’re happy with it, what it looks like, etc.

Elly:
I’m really happy with my pizza these days, but it’s very different to how I started out. I used to try and make pizza like the proper way with just spreading the dough out and doing the toppings and not letting it proof or anything and just straight into the oven onto a pizza stone. But to be honest with I make my pizza with 100% whole grain sourdough dough and as we’ve been saying it is a completely different thing to refined flour pizza dough it doesn’t have a lot of strength to it depending on how much it’s been fermented the dough can lose its structure pretty easily so it’s less likely that it’s going to hold on to its strength when you’re getting it into the oven. And I used to find that the dough in the middle of even baking it really hot on a pizza stone, possibly I was putting too many toppings on my pizza, but I used to find that the dough in the middle of the pizza would be a bit gummy. So my method now is to use a pan, either a half sheet pan.

Elly:
I don’t really care what shape I use. It doesn’t have to be round for me. I’ll just use whatever shape I want. But I do have some nice little commercial pizza pans that I bought from a hospitality place that are like the aluminium ones that the pizza shops use. So either that or a half sheet pan. I spread my dough, put some oil on it and make sure it’s all nice and oily, spread my dough out to whatever thickness I want on that and I leave it. I actually let my pizza dough. I know it’s not proper pizza probably, but this is how it works for me. I don’t know what proper pizza is.

Alison:
That’s a kind of a thing, isn’t it?

Elly:
Oh, look. I just, whole grain sourdough is just so different. None of the rules apply. So you sort of have to make new rules for it, I’ve found.

Alison:
How long do you leave it for?

Elly:
I leave it for up to an hour.

Alison:
And do you cover it with anything?

Elly:
Just a tea towel.

Alison:
Yeah, or another pan. And is that wet? Or just a wet tea towel?

Elly:
Depends on the day. Depends on the day. it also depends on how much olive oil I’ve put on the dough like if it’s a bit oily then I don’t worry about yeah okay covering it up because it’s not going to dry out but if there’s no oil like if you’re going a no oil route then you would want to maybe put another pan over the top or a cutting board or something just something to yeah or a damp towel and then I let, You can’t really see it visibly, but it does puff up a bit again. And then I put my toppings on and then I bake it just on that pan. So obviously there’s no transfer of this onto a baking stone. I’ve abandoned that method. I just put the whole pan with toppings and the little slightly puffy dough in. And I find that way, even with a thin crust, the crust itself, even if it’s only very, very thin, it still has bubbles in it right in the middle of the pizza. And I get a more crust, I don’t know, I just don’t like that gummy, funny texture.

Alison:
What temperature do you do it at? Yeah.

Elly:
Oh, as hot as you can. Same, same, about same as bread. 220, 230, 240. Yeah, okay. It doesn’t really matter. Just the hotter the better, probably.

Alison:
Yeah, usually with bread, that’s the answer. So my routine is completely different to yours.

Elly:
Yours is different, yeah. You’re using the baking stone, aren’t you?

Alison:
Yeah, that’s right. So my pizza is 99.9% whole grain spelt. And I usually make the dough the night before and perhaps leave it out of the fridge for an hour if I can and then it goes in the fridge overnight and then it gets taken out usually some point during the morning the next day in order to be eaten at lunchtime and it gets stretched and folded. And then I used to have an Emile Henry pizza stone, which actually was stone coated and I used to bake at very high temperatures that one like 250, 260 and my oven at the time went up to 300 And I have a pizza peel, which is made of steel with a long wooden handle on it, like you might have seen in Italian restaurants. And so then I would just do the bulk fermentation on the dough, push the dough out on my board with lots of flour underneath it, and then pick up that dough, transfer it to the peel, which is again floured with lots of flour. Rob’s holding the peel because it’s kind of a two-man job. And that’s nice in a way. It comes like a ceremony for our family.

Elly:
Yeah, I love that.

Alison:
And then I’ve got all the toppings already prepared. So I’ve chopped up mushrooms and I’ve got my herbs ready. I’ve got my tomato sauce. And then as Rob’s holding the peel, I very quickly put the toppings on and he shakes it every now and again to make sure it’s not stuck. And the pizza stone has been in the oven already heating up. Pizza stones mean that an oven takes much longer to heat up because it’s got to heat up the stone as well. So sometimes the pizza stone, particularly when I had the ceramic one, we talk about what I’ve got now um later um sometimes it would be in the oven heating up for 30-40 minutes to get that hot enough and then quickly open the door Rob pushes the pizza off the peel thing onto the stone quickly shut the door and generally cooked it for eight minutes and I have found perhaps I don’t put as many toppings on as you um I have found that that

Alison:
Creates more bubbles on the outside than the inside definitely but still creates a crust that is acceptable all the way through you know it’s not kind of soggy and really really wet inside sometimes i will pre-cook some of the toppings so it’s not as wet and there’s not so much water going in there for instance if i’m putting another example is if i put mozzarella on i’ll make sure the mozzarella can drain for a couple of hours on a plate before i’ll chop it up and let it drain because mozzarella can give if you put it straight from the fridge just chopped up it will put a lot of whey into your um to your pizza i probably

Elly:
Put too many vegetables on mine.

Alison:
Yeah maybe in that they’re dehydrating in that temperature yeah and making that go through um i sadly i smashed my emil henry pizza stone on that hard floor in italy when we moved and i I wanted to replace it and I decided to replace it with a Lodge cast iron plate.

Alison:
And I’ve not been as happy with it as the ceramic stone. It says to just put it at a slightly lower temperature, so 220. And I think that’s probably making a difference. And I also feel like, although it’s bigger, so it kind of catches, if anything falls off, it catches it. So it doesn’t end up on the bottom of the oven, which is nice. But the pizza is not as crispy. And it’s just not as nice. And it’s really interesting because in my research for this book on oats I’m writing, a kind of a similar transition happened with, you know, before ovens, people were making oat bread, flat oat breads on girdles, as they were called in Scotland, or bake stones, as they were called in England. And originally they were made of stone, literally stone. And then during the 1800s, there was a transfer from stone to metal because iron became more readily available and was cheaper, I think, than making them out of stone. And all the people who lived through that time and had the experience of baking breads on stone or iron all said that the bread was much nicer on stone. The oat cakes were sweeter than they were. And I think just stone is a nicer way. And so I feel a bit sad that I’m not so happy with my lodge cast iron thing.

Elly:
Was your Emile Henry pizza stone, was it glazed or was it a dry unglazed?

Alison:
Yeah, it was glazed.

Elly:
It was glazed, right.

Alison:
Yeah, and so, yeah, sometime I hope to get another one of them.

Elly:
Yeah, I still have my pizza stone. I have a really large rectangular one that pretty much takes up the whole tray of my oven. It’s wonderful. and I when I do use it I use it for making uh there’s a recipe that I absolutely adore it’s on my website it’s called swabby and souls if anybody’s from Germany they will know what this is and it’s kind of like a German bread roll type thing and baking that any any light or focaccia or anything sort of baguettes anything like that like a free form light bread dough is just beautiful on a stone i agree there’s something special about ceramic and.

Alison:
Stones it’s interesting because talking to the podcast supporters on our discord channel um we have a supporter in australia called francine who uses those kind of aluminium light trays which is there’s one with holes and there’s one without holes um and then we have a listener called lizzie who has just bought a baking steel um said it’s called baking steel but i looked at it and it’s cast iron that’s been coated um and it’s lighter and thinner than um a baking stone or a cast iron solid girdle i mean she’s very very happy with how a pizza’s coming out and that can go to high temperatures just like the cast iron or the ceramic stone can so yeah i think i i like i liked my stone and i hope to have another one one day um because that was just really wonderful what’s your favorite pizza topping

Elly:
Oh, anything with mushrooms and olives. I love salty things.

Alison:
What color olives? What’s your favorite?

Elly:
I tend to just use, I tend to really like Kalamata olives. Oh, that’s best. But whatever olives. I’ll eat any olives.

Alison:
Any olives. Just give me olives. You know, Gabriel, my son really likes olives. And there’s a stall at the market every week that sells them. And we’ve been like, no, come on, they’re a treat. So I got some for his birthday. And he’s come up with this recipe for a spelt focaccia which is layered in a way I’d never would have done it myself in a in like a cake tin like four layers of bread with um mozzarella and olives in between and I sent a picture out in my newsletter and people were emailing me so I can have the recipe I said I said to Gabriel people want your recipe Gabriel so he’s we’ve been writing it up this week olives are just so nice they’re wonderful on pizza I agree absolutely wonderful.

Elly:
Yeah, I love all those.

Alison:
Okay, we have gone on for quite some time. What we’re going to do now is continue over on the private feed for supporters. I put a call out asking for questions and we’ve got quite a few. So if you are a supporter, you can head over to your private feed and you will hear us talking about creating the best crust, using that unglazed ceramic baker that we mentioned earlier, seasoning a cast iron skillet, how to avoid using parchment or baking paper, how to alter baking times based on the pan you’re using, and then how Ellie goes about creating a recipe. So you can head over to that private feed. If you’re not yet a supporter and you’d like to come and join us at the kitchen table, you can find details of how to join at the companionship level at ancestralkitchenpodcast.com forward slash join. Okay, before we say goodbye on the main feed, Ellie, could you just remind people where they can find you if they want to just stay in contact with your wonderful expertise and your lovely videos?

Elly:
Oh, thanks, Alison. My website is ellieseveryday.com and you can pretty much use that as a base to find everything. I have two YouTube channels. One is called Ellie’s Everyday Whole Grain Sourdough and that’s mostly bread but some other cooking things as well. And Ellie’s Everyday Soap Making and I’m also on Instagram as well. So you can find me in any of those places and I’d love to say hi.

Alison:
Thank you ever, ever so much for coming on, Ellie. There is no one else who I would have been more privileged to do this episode with. I’m so happy to chat to you again and to bring you to our audience. Thank you so much.

Elly:
Thanks, Alison. It has been really fun. I don’t know anybody else who would enjoy a very nerdy chat about Brentines. Like you. Wonderful. So, yeah, it’s been great. Thank you so much for asking me. It’s been a pleasure.

Alison:
Thank you. Bye.

Elly:
Bye..