I am very happy with the existing bread, but did want to see if I could get it to rise more.
For #3 I left yeast at 1g and let it bloom in 100def F water for 10mins. increased water by 10g to get a slightly wetter dough. I cooked on LO for 4 hours instead of HI for 2 hours.
The resulting loaf is about the same as the first 2, perhaps slightly shorter due to a concave top surface:
Crust is definitely heartier on the 2hr/150w version. I’ll return to that standard for the next round.
I suspect:
- the low ambient temps overnight are retarding yeast activity
- wheat flour might behave differently than white
Switching to white will be easier than warming the yeast overnight, though I have been eyeing that 20w heating pad…
a boondocking retirement 
Have you tried a long, slow rise? Overnight or longer in cool place. Then gently set it in a hot crock pot.
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Yes, all these no-knead experiments involve an 18-hr overnight rise. I have not tried putting it in a pre-heated crock; thus far I have either placed the dough in the cold crock and starting it, or, recently, allowing the rise to happen in the crock itself.
I suspect some temp control will be required.
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I’ve been making biscuits in my dog-bowl oven. May move on to yeast bread!
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Glad to hear it! My dog bowl oven parts are in El Paso awaiting my arrival next week.
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I was watching a crazy Irish guy demonstrasting that he could run 230VAC appliances direct from the 350VDC of his electric car battery, and for some reason it made me think of you.
Can you run 110VAC devices from the 90VDC of your new solar panels? It might work for your crock pot if it’s purely resistive?
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I don’t know enough about AC power to even understand the issues! I have read that people have run AC water heater elements on DC.
Other than experimental fun, it wouldn’t do me much good in the van since all the power would be routed to the crockpot and limited to its 150w demands. If I run the panels into the existing system I can make something like 580w max, so I could run the 150w crock (+15w inverter losses), charge the batts or run loads with the remaining harvest.
If I had more understanding of AC or wanted to experiement I might use the 2x 100w panels in series for that, stepping up voltage with a boost converter I have in storage for Mad Scientist projects.
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Please, keep those awesome bread experiments coming. So cool. And if you have other forms of cooking you’re tinkering with, I’d love to hear that too! You’re making me crave the road.
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Will do. I like the idea of people sharing info about what works and what doesn’t. I’d share more but WordPress requires bandwidth which I don’t always have. It took about 60 seconds to load this page so I could reply. 😦
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