[Acidity]

I've been recently kicking a bit of homemade wine vinegar into just about everything cooked on the stovetop and oven dishes like cassoulet. Soups, stews, cassoulet, you name it. Not enough to taste the vinegar, but it gives an incredible kick to the flavor profile of almost everything. Now I'm starting to wonder about baking and how it would interact with other ingredients.

And the flavor of the homemade wine vinegar seems to make a difference versus commercial vinegar or something just adding acid.

[Acidity]

I've been thinking about acidity lately, and about how so many cooks -- both professional and non-professional -- fail to consider acidity when cooking. If you flip through standard cookbooks, you see very few acid components in the recipes. Yet acidity is a key component of many dishes, if you want them to taste their best.

In many cases, acidity can be the difference between a good dish and a great one. The other day, for example, I made some lentils to accompany braised short ribs. The lentils were good, don't get me wrong. They were cooked with the strained, defatted braising liquid from the short ribs, and they had some of the short-rib meat diced up and mixed in with the lentils. But my friend, after tasting from the pot, noted, "It could use a little acidity." A splash of vinegar and it was a substantially better dish.

So, I was hoping we could start a discussion of acidity.

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[No-Knead Bread - Batard Shape]

It does appear that the baker Tim had is unglazed. If it's lower fired, it will soak up water like a romertopf. PW had good luck soaking and then baking at 425 degF. Tim, if you read this, what is the brand of the baker?

[No-Knead Bread - Batard Shape]

Hi,

I would like to make the no-knead bread in a traditional batard shape.  Sassafras makes a "Superstone Clay French Bread Baker" that is covered and  has the right  size and shape.  (14 1/2"L x 5"W x 2 1/2"H.)

Pictue of French Bread Clay Baker

The instructions for the Baker state that it is oven/microwave safe and freeze proof.  It also specifies that 'care should be taken fo avoid thermal shock of hot to cold or cold to hot.

I emailed the company, asking if 4 cups of room temp dough would crack a baker heated to 450 degrees.  They have not responded.

Does anyone have experience with this type of clay baker?  Does anyone have thoughts about no-knead bread in a clay baker without pre-heating?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Tim

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Tim,

We are potters in Hutchinson, MN and might be able to help you. We had a customer call about using one of our bowls for the no-knead bread recipe. I looked up the recipe and noted in the recipe that the baking dish needs to be heated to 450 degF. and that ceramic bowls were one of the listed utensils. There is some risk in using ceramic bowls for this as it can cause the glaze to craze after it cools.

To give you the long part of this, normal highfire ceramics can go easily in the oven (not on the stovetop). The reason for this is that most of a clay pot is silica (glass) which expands and contracts on heating and cooling. The glaze on the surface of a pot is also silica, but of a different percent and formula than the clay.

When we fire pots, the goal is to have the shrinkage of the melted glaze to be the same as the shrinkage of the clay after cooling. You can then heat and cool this clay/glaze system any number of times without risk.

The problem is that one of the silica crystals that is formed during firing is cristobalite. This crystal undergoes a very rapid expansion/contraction of about 2.5% at 226 degC (about 425 degF). This expansion can cause the overlying glaze to craze/crackle since glazes typically don't have the cristobalite form of silica and don't do their major expansion until over 1000 degF.

It won't ruin the pot for future use as crazed/crackled glazes are not unusual, but a user will see a change. The solution is to keep the temperature under 425 degF. when using ceramic pots or go with Paula W's method of using unglazed pottery (eg Romertopf) for the baking.

If you'd like any additional information we're at 320-587-2599.