Solar Cooking Demo Plans

I've mentioned a couple of times that I will be doing a solar cooking demonstration at my CSA in a few weeks. My goal is to show members how easy it is to cook the foods we get from the farm in a solar oven, taking advantage of Arizona's abundant sunshine. Perhaps a few will be inspired to get their own solar oven.

I am perhaps biting off a bit too much in my efforts to show the wide variety of foods that can be cooked in the solar oven. I've talked the founder of the CSA into using his to roast a cut of the locally-raised meat that we sell, while I am preparing a host of other dishes using as many different foods we get from the farm as I can.

I'll be cooking pinto beans with dried red chile peppers, to be topped with a tasty green tomato relish that I've already prepared. The relish was cooked in the solar oven before canning. I've already made some sweet pickled onions to be added to two dishes. One will be a salad with the corn that I cooked and froze over the weekend. I'll thaw the corn and toss it with the onions, fresh tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, and some oil and basil vinegar. I juiced oranges and grapefruit to be mixed with club soda for a refreshing citrus seltzer and candied the peels, doing some of that cooking in the solar oven. Hopefully we will get cucumbers this week so I can make pickles to go in a potato salad with the pickled onions. The potatoes will, of course, be cooked in the solar oven.

I also want to do something with the wheat berries we get. I'd never baked yeast bread in the oven and was not happy with the results of my one past attempt at fatfree vegan quick bread several years ago. (It came out overly moist.) Yesterday, I finally had a chance to test a bread recipe in the oven. After deliberating over this for some time, I decided my best bet would be breadsticks. They'd surely bake through even if the temperature wasn't high enough and they would be easy to cut into pieces for sampling.


The recipe is very easy and I will share it with you shortly. I preheated both the SunOven and the flatter Tulsi Oven. My suspicion was the SunOven would do better because it typically gets hotter than the Tulsi. (The Tulsi has "booster panels" that can be attached to the side to increase the reflection and temperature but I forgot to try those out yesterday.) I mixed up my dough, rolled out the bread sticks, and set them outside to rise.


After filling two baking sheets, one large metal one that would fit in the Tulsi and a smaller glass one that would just barely fit in the SunOven, I still had a little dough leftover. I got creative and made a few braided breadsticks to bake after the others were done.

I put the breadsticks in the ovens. I didn't have thermometers in the solar ovens but I knew there was no way they had heated up to the 400 degrees the breadsticks needed so I set the timer for twice as long as the recipe suggested.


I checked first in the SunOven. They were not browned but a taste test indicated they were cooked.


The surprise came when I check the ones in the Tulsi. They had browned nicely on the bottom! I suspect this had more to do with the metal pan than the temperature.


The braids, baked in the Tulsi, also browned very nicely on the bottom in another metal pan. There are only two braids in this photo because I sent the prettiest one home with my friend that came for lunch.


Look what she brought me from her garden! Yellow banana peppers and cherry tomatoes that are as sweet as candy.

I am absolutely thrilled to have finally baked bread in my ovens and am happy I will be able to make these for the cooking demo. All I need now is for the weather to cooperate. After a wonderful hot clear day yesterday, there are high thin clouds blocking my sun today. This is partly why I have been cooking and canning or freezing much of the demo food already. I still need to do the beans and breadsticks, both of which could be cooked and frozen ahead (although I'm starting to run short on freezer space!), but there is no way to do the potato salad more than one day ahead of time. At the demo, the ovens may be used mostly to reheat all the food rather than cooking it fresh.


Garlicky Breadsticks
2 tsp yeast
2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup warm water (~110 degrees)
1 cup whole wheat flour + more for kneading (I prefer to use the lighter whole white wheat.)
2 tbs nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp granulated garlic (or garlic powder)
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp granulated onion (or onion powder)
1/8 tsp black pepper

Mix the yeast and sugar in a medium bowl.
Stir in the warm water until the yeast and sugar dissolve.
Let sit in a warm place for 10 minutes until the mixture is foamy.
Combine the flour and seasonings.
Add to the yeast mixture and stir until smooth.
Turn out onto a floured board and knead until the dough forms a soft ball that is no longer sticky. Be careful not to knead in so much flour that the dough becomes stiff.
Cut into 12 pieces and roll out into long thin breadsticks.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and place breadsticks on them.
Cover with a dishtowel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.
Preheat a standard oven to 400 degrees and bake 8-10 minutes until golden brown.
OR
Preheat solar ovens and check after 15-20 minutes depending on your conditions.