![generals rise of the reds letterbox generals rise of the reds letterbox](http://rotr.swr-productions.com/news/ROTR_release_stream.jpg)
Tip them over and the new-baked loaf just kind of falls out. The important thing, though, is how readily freshly baked bread comes out of these. I’m going to be interested to see how long this phase lasts and how durable the nonstick coating is. You don’t dare pick them up without having a firm grip on both the pan and the lid, as (given the slightest opportunity) the lid will slide right off the pan and head for points unknown.įrankly, though, as a baker who’s dealt in her time with more than enough annoyingly sticky pans that should have been nonsticky, this is kind of a refreshing change. The pans will Zamboni around with alarming slidiness on any kitchen surface where you place them. The thing to warn you about in advance, if you get these, is that right out of the box, the non-stick coating on these is SERIOUS BUSINESS. That, though, is the recipe we’re using at the moment for testing purposes. Some of the recipes we use produce denser loaves than the house recipe for Just Plain Old White Bread. These pans are both rated for a 450g loaf….though, again, it’s going to take some testing to see how much leeway there is in this rating. It’s going to take more testing, over more time, to determine which of them does a better crust on the bread (though again, since these are pain de mie pans, the crust isn’t really meant to be the main act). We’ve been testing them for some days now, and briefly: they’re terrific.Īs regards materials: the aluminum pan weighs 405g: the steel one weighs 624g. So we sent for them, and along they came. They come in both steel and aluminum versions. This style of pan is available in various sizes and materials, so we decided to get a couple of the smaller ones-essentially one-pound loaf pans-and see how they worked. They’re available from numerous different retailers, leading me to believe that they’re being manufactured by one or two companies in China under different badges or marques for different retailers. Recently, though, one or the other of us spotted the items below on Amazon. After a while we passed the USA pan to friends at a local pub/B&B, and went back to the “regular” loaf pans for the time being. But it was both bigger than we needed-loaves made with it wound up needing to be cut in half to fit in our bread box-and also a bit fractious: sometimes difficult to shut, and also often difficult to open. This was the preferred bread for premium sandwiches, canapes, croutons, and toast.)Īt any rate, the pan we got from the US company was well made, heavy, and baked a good loaf. European bakers were producing so-called pain de mie, “bread made for its crumb”, for at least two centuries previous. (The style turns out to be far older than its use on the railway, though. The first thing we tried was a lidded baking pan/baking tin from a US maker now long associated with this type of bread pan: a “Pullman pan”, so called because it was the type of bread pan used in the kitchens of Pullman train cars. So we started looking for taller-sided baking pans that would give the rising dough more support in the upwards direction. The loaf-in-process sags over the sides of the pan while it’s baking, and afterwards you wind up having to chop the sides off it so that slices will fit into the slots in the toaster… altogether a most unseemly business. With more highly hydrated doughs, this definitely turns into a problem.
![generals rise of the reds letterbox generals rise of the reds letterbox](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dJxLKVHg1LU/mqdefault.jpg)
In particular, though high-risen loaves with domed tops are undeniably lovely, Peter and I found that about half the time the loaves we made in the standard bread pan were showing a preference (once they’d risen to the pan’s top) for, during the further rise, expanding sideways rather than upwards. We’ve been using the standard garden-variety North American style of home bread-baking pan for a long time, but there comes a moment when you realize suddenly that you’ve been using the wrong tool to produce the effect you want, and you start looking around for something that’ll do the job better.