If you are going to spend your hard-earned dollars, it’s your job and responsibility to maximize the amount of value you get for your money. You should already know this. You know it’s very hard to earn money. You know you put on the time, effort and skill to earn your keep. Why not maximize the return you get for your hard-earned dollars. This is why it’s really important to employ this mindset when you go out shopping for anything. This includes bread cloches and bread machines. Whether you’re giving them as gifts, or you’re using them for yourself, you need to focus on three things: value, value, and value. What follows is a great, systematic and methodical way to maximize the value you get from bread cloches.
Focus on functionality
When looking at many different best bread cloches produced by different brands under many different models, focus on functionality. If the bread cloche you are considering doesn’t do the job or doesn’t get the job done right, don’t waste any more time on it. It’s a waste of time and money. It’s like buying a cracked pot. A pot is supposed to hold something. If it’s cracked, it’s worthless. The same applies to bread cloches. If it doesn’t handle steam the right way, then it is worthless.
The key takeaway here is that you can’t get taken in by secondary considerations or features when the product does a lousy job delivering its primary purpose. The primary purpose of cloches is to make sure enough steam is generated as to prime the outer surface of the dough to create a nice steaming loaf of crust-covered crunchy bread with a nice moist interior. This is its primary job. Lose sight of this and allow yourself to be taken in by the cosmetic aspects of the cloche or its other features and you end up buying a product that is simply not up to the job. That’s the bottom line. Focus on primary considerations first then move on down the line to secondary considerations. Never put the cart before the horse when it comes to buying this type of bakeware. You just might regret it when you see that your bread doesn’t have the crust you were looking forward to.
Can it handle the heat?
The secondary job of bread cloche is to handle the heat. It has to handle a very high heat so it can handle steam properly. This is how you get nice and evenly textured thick-crust bread. Without even and high-quality heat handling, you are going to end up with a lousy crust. The main reason why you’re buying bread cloches in the first place is to produce high-quality crusty bread. It’s not going to happen if the bread cloche’s design doesn’t do a good job in handling steam or high heat. It has to do both.
Can it last a long time?
Whether you’re buying bread cloches for yourself or somebody else, durability is crucial. You want to maximize the amount of value you get from anything you buy. The longer you are able to use something, the more value you get from it. This is not theoretical. This is not something just nice to know. This amounts to dollar and cents. For example, if you are going to spend a hundred dollars on an item, and you’re presented with two options. One item lasts five years. The other item lasts one year.
If you buy the first item, you get a lot more value than if you bought the second item. You’re spending the same amount of money, but the life of the item dictates in a tremendous way how much value you get. Put in another way, the longer you use an item, the cheaper it is to have owned that item. Going back to the example above, the item with a one-year lifetime costs 100 dollars for that year. The other item with a five-year life cycle costs much less and produces more value over time. Which would you rather have? Insist that the bread cloche you are considering has a reputation for lasting a long time.
Pick the right size
It’s also important to look at how you normally bake bread. You should be able to get a fairly clear idea about the size you actually require. Focus on the average size of the items you bake so your bread cloches are not too small or too big. Find the right model which fits all these criteria. You increase the likelihood that you maximize the value of the hard-earned dollars you spend for bread cloches. Be a little more purposeful, systematic, and methodical when buying anything for your home or yourself.
While you’re here, be sure to check out our kitchen product reviews!