The Sun vs Solar Cooker

I had my fingers crossed that the run of sunny weather would extend into my days off work and was rewarded by blue skies on Sunday morning. There was a wee bit of haze so I decided to wait for half an hour as anything blocking the sun has an impact on my Sunflair solar oven. I wanted to make the bread recipe in the handout that came with the oven and needed 4 hours of good strong sunshine.

The haze cleared so it was good to go. The recipe is a simple one using yeast, milk, rolled oats, olive oil, honey, egg and flour. I added extra flour and maybe I put too much yeast in as my scales go up in 5g leaps. There's no rising stage involved - just mix it up, knead it for 5 minutes or so and put into a silicon pot with the lid on top. In short time I had it in the oven and went off to check my rat traps.

When I emerged from the bush I saw that the haze had returned and knew that the oven temperature would have dropped but I wasn't expecting to see this...

Ha ha!! With no prospect of cooking the loaf in the solar oven I turned on the electric oven instead, added more flour to the dough as it was pretty gooey and kneaded it until it became smooth and elastic before making it into roll size and popping it in a more stable heat source for 30 minutes.



Not exactly what I had planned when I woke up but I'll keep trying. The Sun 1, Solar Cooker 0!

Yummy hot bread roll with Vegemite and cheese :)