Bread Without an Oven

Take 500g of your favourite yeast-based bread readymix and place in a large heavy-based saucepan.

Add suffcient cold water to make a wettish dough. Make sure you have enough of the readymix to add a little more the following morning. This takes about five minutes.

After mixing, cover the pan with the lid and keep in a warm place overnight.

The following morning, add enough of your dry mix to make a soft dough.

Turn out the dough onto a floured worktop and knead until the dough is springy. This should take only a couple of minutes. (How to knead dough)

Clean out the pan, dry thoroughly, and oil the base and sides.

Place the ball of dough into the pan, cover with the lid, and put in a warm place to rise.

When the dough has doubled in size, place the pan with the dough onto a hob ring or stove burner at the highest setting.

Heat until you can hear the dough starting to fry on the base.

Keep at the high heat for a couple of minutes. You should aim to get a good colour to your crust at this point.

Turn the heat down to the lowest setting and leave for about half an hour, letting the condensation drip onto the bread.

After half an hour has passed, use a fish slicer or similar to carefully turn the loaf over. You may need to tip the pan as you do this to make it easier.

Turn the heat up to full again just to get the other side to a nice crust.

Turn down the heat to the minimum again and cook with the lid off until the loaf makes a hollow sound when tapped. I find a further half hour works for me.

Now that your loaf is cooked, you can turn the heat up a little and cook the sides if you wish, turning the loaf from time to time as you keep a good eye on it so as not to burn the sides.

When you have finished the sides turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool thoroughly before slicing.