New Gadget: French Bread/Baguette Pan

Because of gracious readers who clicked from this blog to Amazon before making their purchases, I received my first gift card from Amazon with my portion of those sales.  I decided it was only right to use that money toward a kitchen tool that I could try out and share here...Putting my income 'back into the business,' so to speak.                                                                                                                                  

In A Day for Baking: Part Heart, Part Science I showed my towel trick for trying to keep the somewhat wet artisan bread dough in loaf shape, since it wants to spread flat.  This worked during the rise time, but left the whole situation at risk when I had to move the dough from the support of the towels to the baking 
stone in the oven.  For years, I'd thought about buying a French bread pan, but never let go of the $20 to do so.  This was my opportunity!  It arrived a few days ago.                                                                     



I was pretty confident that, like the towels, it would do a fine job supporting the dough during its rise time.  It didn't disappoint there.                                                                                       
What I wasn't sure about was whether it was a good idea to have a pan between the dough and the baking stone...If it would bake as well without sitting directly 
on the preheated, very hot stone.  Not only would the cold metal be in between, but do to the shape, much of the pan would be curved up away from the stone, rather than making contact.  It didn't prove to be a problem at all.                                                                                  
The bread baked beautifully, and with the interesting little pattern on the bottom that added to the crispness of the loaf.                                                                                                                                                              
I'm quite happy to have this new tool.  It made baking artisan loaves for our family much easier with more assured handling and consistent sizing...And it's great to be able to bake 2 at a time.

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