Halogen bread

After following up on Diane's idea (on Good Morning, Early Readers) about using the oven as a proving oven and finding mine was too hot, I tried her other idea of using my halogen oven and it worked a treat for both rising and proving.  I set it to halfway between off and 'defrost' which was just right.

I baked the loaf in the oven because I like to give the loaf a good blast of heat and then turn the oven down to 180 for the rest of the time.

However, it then occurred to me that perhaps I could leave the loaf in Handy Andy and just turn up the temperature (remembering to remove the cling film first!!).    Heating is extremely fast in a halogen oven, after all.  So I gave it a go using 1lb loaf amounts  as for above (250g flour, heaped half tsp yeast, ditto of salt, a splodge of oil and about 160 mls water), the reason being if it didn't work there would be minimal wastage.

Did it work?

Well yes.  I have a decent looking loaf (as decent as mine usually are), it's risen well, it's possibly a bit darker on the top than the one done in the oven but not unduly so.  I'm sure it was cheaper than having the oven on for just one loaf (or two loaves as I would normally do), especially if I did the rising and proving the normal way.

As for the taste and the crumb - I'll have to wait as I want them both to be cool.  I will add more later (if I remember).
And then they will be frozen with one bit cut off!

And by the way - those odd 'lines' are because I always use a paper liner nowadays.  The chances of anything sticking are about zero!

Edited just before 18:00 to say both are delicious, both have a great texture and I guess it is Handy Andy for me from now on unless the oven has to be on for something else as well!