Slow Cookers

Yesterday, I watched Sandra Lee on her show: Sandra's Money Saving Meals Episode: Slow Cooker Savings, 
Now, I've always had slow cookers in my kitchen, got my first one as a marriage gift, many years ago and I've since worn out at least four cookers.  I've made countless pot roasts, stews, soups, chowders,  and vegetables in them.  I have four slow cooker cookbooks, and some of them mention that you can bake bread in the slow cooker, but I have never personally done so, until now.  Sandra's banana bread looked interesting enough to me, that I decided to go try my own hand at baking.  However, I choose not to replicate Sandra's banana bread in my endeavor, instead, due to my wheat allergy, I needed to make a gluten free bread.  Additionally, my Mother makes the best banana bread in the world, and if I were going to make banana bread, I would make her recipe.  Sorry Sandra, but that's the way it is.


I'm getting over two rounds of antibiotics which began just a day before Christmas and ending this past Sunday.  Because I've been a bit under the weather, healthwise, and my stomach has been a war zone of chemicals of mass destruction, I'm eating very bland while trying to recover my gut's flora and fauna.  I needed plain toast yesterday and had no gluten free bread, therefore, I made a loaf and decided to see how the slow cooker would handle it.


I threw into my stainless steel bowl 1/3 of a cup of sorghum flour, 1/3 cup brown rice flour, 1/3 cup millet flour that I ground in my Vita-Mix, 1/3 cup tapioca flour, 1/4 cup coconut flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 eggs, 1-1/4 cup yogurt, 1 cup strong brewed lemon tea, 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt, 1 tablespoon ground flax meal, 1/4 cup sugar.
This made a batter a bit thinner than brownie batter.  Poured this into my glass baking loaf pan which I'd sprayed with olive oil spray.


I set a trivet into the cooker, poured water in to the top of the trivet, placed the loaf pan on the trivet, covered with a paper towel as Sandra recommended, set the cooker on low and left it for four hours.


When I removed the loaf from the cooker, I noticed an appearance similar to what you get from the microwave.  Not browned, but done.  The dough rose nicely to top of pan without overflowing.  It was dense yet not really heavy.


I cut and ate a slice while it was hot.  There were lots of bubble holes in it, but I only hand mixed it with a fork, quickly like biscuit dough.  Taste was good enough for me-similar texture to English muffins.


This morning, I toasted some in my oven for breakfast, it toasted nicely.

MY GUT REACTION?  I will  definitely continue to experiment with baking breads in my slow cooker.  This could be very useful for those times when the oven is tied up with other foods or when I am busy and do not want to risk using the oven and over cooking a bread.