If you’re looking for great bread with an amazing crust, you can’t go wrong baking the bread in a bread cloche. Bread cloches, after all, have been designed throughout hundreds of years to maximize the crust value of bread. Ask any person who loves bread, and they would tell you that when it comes to bread quality, the taste is just the first consideration.
Put simply, it’s just the first thing that comes to mind on a list of qualities that makes great bread great. In other words, taste is not everything. Now, don’t get me wrong, great taste can go a long way as far as bread quality goes, but if you’re going to compare two pieces of bread that basically have the same taste, one loaf of bread would edge out the other, based primarily on other factors like aroma and most importantly, texture.
It doesn’t matter which part of the world you come from, there are always local bread recipes. Of course, most of the more established types of bread are located primarily in Europe or the Middle East. This is after all, where bread first began. Wheat, believe it or not, actually started out as weed that was first domesticated in the near East.
It’s easy to see why there are a lot of local bread variations. Different people in different cultures and different historical periods have different preferences. Thankfully, the taste for crusty bread has survived history. It really has survived the ages. People look forward to bread that is nice and spongy in the interior and thick and crusty on the outside. This is exactly the kind of bread that you need if you eat a lot of stew or soups.
There’s nothing more satisfying than dipping your bread, along with its thick crust in some nice soup. If you’ve ever had an amazing bowl of clam chowder, you probably would agree that part of what makes that dish so amazing is the thick crusty bread that you eat it with. In fact, in San Francisco, there is a famous restaurant there that serves clam chowder and other soups in bowls made out of bread with a thick crust.
Crust is very important
If you are baking bread and you want it to be more memorable and to taste better, don’t ignore the crust. Now, you might be thinking for yourself, why does crust have to do with taste? It may seem like they are two totally different things. You have to understand that when it comes to bread, texture plays a big role in how you appreciate the bread overall.
Texture, in of itself, is not taste. Everybody can agree on that. But it can accompany taste in terms of giving you a really great impression of the overall quality of the bread that you are enjoying. With everything else being equal, if you have two home-made loaves of bread and one has a nice crust that meets your particular preference, you probably would prefer that loaf of bread even though it’s exactly the same as the other loaf, as far as taste is concerned. Texture is very important.
Bread cloches to the rescue
Considering the big role texture plays in how well a loaf of bread is received or not by you and your friends and family members, it’s important to look at what you have available to you in terms of baking tools to ensure that you get that nice crusty exterior that you’re looking for.
Of course, the crust quality is determined primarily by the recipe of the bread. Certain bread recipes from certain parts of the world require relatively thick crusts. Other bread recipes only require a fairly thin crust, but it has to be nice and tough outside. Whatever the case may be, you need to make sure that you’re using the right tool when baking these types of breads.
Unfortunately, if you’re just going to use a bread pan for your bread, it’s going to be very tough to get that nice exterior. I’m not saying that you would be able to accomplish this. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that it can be quite random. This has probably happened to you. The first few times you baked a bread recipe, it turned out well. The crust is just right, the bread’s consistency is amazing. The next time you try that same recipe, you do the exact same things, the bread turns out very different. Somehow, someway, the crust is a little bit softer, or it’s too crusty.
Whatever the case may be, something isn’t right. And you try again and you get the same disappointing results. You’re about to give up and you try again, and out comes an amazing piece of bread. It’s really frustrating because of the inconsistency and unreliability of just simply using a typical oven.
The good news is that by simply buying bread cloches, you can make crusty bread on a consistent basis. Seriously. The great thing about bread cloches is that it traps the heat in such a way that the steam rising off the dough doesn’t vaporize too quickly. The steam is given the opportunity to puff up the exterior of the bread so that by the time the heat of the oven dries up the interior of the best bread cloche, the bread has formed a nice crust.
Considering all the action that takes place and the fact that you’re no longer hoping against hope that somehow, someway, you would luck into a nice, crusty piece of bread. The way how bread cloches works is very exciting. This takes the boredom out of baking because you are using a tool that would bring a lot of texture to your table. It’s much different than making bread in a bread machine, that’s for sure!
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