On Tue, 20 Apr 2004, Allan Adler wrote:

>
> I don't have any recipes for baking bread with a microwave oven.
> I think microwaves ovens are not interchangeable, so a recipe from
> a book with one microwave in mind might not work on another.
>
> So far, I've been improvising. I tried just mixing some flour, water
> and baking soda and putting it right in the microwave. If I simply let
> it cook for a couple of minutes at full power, it gets all hard and dried
> out and looks somewhat burned. If I cook it at the lowest possible power,
> it dries out much more slowly and never seems to burn but also never seems
> to quite cook. To deal with that last problem, I've let it cook for 1 minute
> at full power. I've tried making rolls and small loaves and have obtained
> results that I'm not sorry about having eaten but which don't really
> seem like bread. They are quite dense. I'm hoping to do better once I
> can let the dough rise, but I really need to have some rational way to
> think about using the microwave for this.
>
> I might be able to get some a few from the manufacturer, and maybe they
> will suffice, but it would be nice to be able to go beyond that.

I believe you'd have to look at the science behind conventional ovens and
microwave ovens. They bake things using different principles. The facts
that make bread possible in a conventional oven are just not present in a
microwave. You would have to develop a new way to make bread.

For example, you need microwave popcorn. You cannot use regular popcorn.
The popcorn is not different. The bag that microwave popcorn comes in
makes the difference. Also, you can get special trays for cooking things
in a microwave that normally don't cook well in a microwave.

Maybe you need to develop a system for making the bread in the microwave.
Don't change the recipe but change the way the bread bakes. Maybe you need
to change the recipe as well.

> Ignorantly,
> Allan Adler
>
>
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