I think with those temps I wouldn't be eating much bread. I'd put the bread machine away and haul it out when the temps get lower.

But how does a bread machine heat up the kitchen anyway???

I realized I had left out an important bit of information. I use the bread machine just for kneading & rising. If I baked bread in it, there'd be no problem. But I'm not fond of the extra thick crust. And I get pretty upset when something goes wrong -- like the bread overproofs & then collapses while baking. You get much more control over the finished product when you do the shaping and baking manually. I try to make all our bread-type products because my husband is on a salt restricted diet.

Oh - I never thought about that. So what you're looking for is something to cook on the stovetop? I don't bake so I don't have any suggestions but maybe bumping this back up to the top will give you some help.

seagrass

Did you ever try bannock - you can grill it too. Good for breakfasts with butter and jam.

I've never tried these on the stove, but I've made them over a campfire, so I don't see why they couldn't be done on the stovetop or on your grill outside:

BEER and BACON SKILLET BISCUITS
makes 8 biscuits

3 slices bacon
1-3/4 cups packaged biscuit mix
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup beer

Place bacon strips in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet. Prepare grill for indirect grilling, except omit drip pan. Test for medium heat above the center of the grill. Place the skillet with the bacon on the grill rack in the center of the grill (not over heat). Cover and grill about 12 minutes or until bacon is crisp, turning once. Remove bacon from skillet, reserving drippings in skillet. Drain bacon on paper towels; crumble bacon. In a medium bowl stir together the biscuit mix and cayenne pepper. Add the beer and crumbled bacon; stir until biscuit mix is moistened. Carefully spoon dough in 8 mounds into hot skillet on grill rack. Cover grill and grill about 8 minutes or until biscuit bottoms are light brown. Serve warm.

I've also made cornbread batter and then cooked them on the stovetop like pancakes, making "hoecakes", kind of.

If you're interested in cooking outside at all, I bake everything from cookies to pie to cinnamon rolls in a cast iron dutch oven, with coals on the bottom and the top. It's a bit more time consuming but won't heat up the kitchen.

Annie

I cook my English muffins in my cast iron pans on the stove top; usually have one large skillet and 1 round griddle going at the same time so it doesn't take so long. Corn cakes are good with a summer dinner of fish and fresh vegetables - they are made with cornmeal or cornbread mix and are cooked like pancakes. You might look at recipes for naan, an Indian bread that you may be able to cook on the stove top.

I would suggest you get a good sized toaster oven! I have a Cuisinart and have used it for baking cornbread (in a small cast iron skillet), pizza (baking it directly on clay tiles laid on the TO rack), loaf bread (baked in smaller foil loaf pans), yeast rolls (baked in a round pie plate), biscuits (baked on 10" pizza pan). A toaster oven does not heat up the kitchen the way a full size oven does! And don't I know it! I live in the South BTW.

Their are many bread recipes that can be stored in the fridge for a few days and used up slowly: angel biscuits (a delicious, light yeast roll recipe), bran muffins, the 5 minutes a day bread recipes, the No Knead recipe, even pizza dough can be parked in the fridge (or freezer).

I would think you could cook a pizza crust in a large pan on the stove, turn it over to cook the other side, put on sauce, toppings, and cheese then cover with a lid or flat pizza pan to heat the toppings and melt the cheese. I know that biscuits can be cooked on the stove or over a campfire.

OT...it is so nice to be back on the CF at home. I'm loving this new-to-me fast Mac system that my son installed the other night! I'm on Windows/PC at work, had an older Linux system before, and now I'm using a Mac. They all really build my confidence!

Teresa

Sorry, I didn't see that you were asking for recipes until after I posted.

Here is a link to a recipe cooked on top of the stove.

Here is a link that might be useful: English Tea Muffins or Crumpets at King Arthur Flour

Move your bread machine outside to the garage if you don't want to heat the kitchen up during it's baking time. Or try baking out in the garage in a large toaster oven. The garage is where I do much of my dehydrating during the hot summer months, and that's where I run my water distiller, which also puts off a lot of heat. I take over the work bench in the summer.

Personally, I think it's much hotter work making tortillas, English Muffins and crumpets standing over a hot griddle - than baking bread. Especially with today's well-insulated ovens. Tortillas, English Muffins and Sourdough Crumpets are things I typically make an abundance of the last cool mornings of spring and fill my freezer with them to use the rest of the summer.

I use my Sharp Convection/Microwave oven for baking more often than not these days, and especially in the summer. It takes less energy, you can usually reduce the temperature by 25°F and the baking time by 25% for even more savings. I bake two loaves of bread in 25-minutes and NO preheating. Otherwise I do as much cooking and baking as possible in our two solar ovens.

Check out the tortilla recipe at the link below.

King Arthur Flour - SOURDOUGH CRUMPETS (much easier to make than traditional crumpets)
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-crumpetsbrior-how-to-resurrect-a-neglected-starter/i-recipe

Grainlady Note: Use a 4-cup measuring cup (for easy pouring), or a bowl of similar size. This batter really rises a lot in the bowl so you need the 4-cup volume to accomodate the 1-cup of starter.

For each 1-cup sourdough starter, sprinkle over the surface:

1 t. sugar
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda

Whisk these in thoroughly. Fill crumpet rings with about 1/4-inch of batter and cook it over low heat until the tops are set and full of holes. Remove the rings and flip the crumpets over for a minute or two.

Allow to cool on a wire rack in a single layer. Do NOT stack like pancakes or they will stick together. I quick-freeze them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. When frozen, stack with a piece of parchment paper between each crumpet, place in a freezer bag or plastic container in the freezer.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Kansas Wheat Commission - Tortillas

You've gotten some good suggestions and recipes. I'd just like to mention that you can still use your bread machine to make the doughs you like and cook the bread on the grill. Use cast iron pan for a round loaf or put bread pans on an upper shelf or on the side with no heat.

Also for english muffins you can go to the Faq up top on the main page and scroll down for english muffin recipe and instructions.

When I make English muffins or something else on the griddle, I get almost as much heat radiating into the kitchen as when I use the oven....and if I making a "batch" the griddle runs longer than the oven would.
I use my oven and turn on both kitchen fans to draw the heat out.
Did someone mention that with a little practice and some careful watching of grill temperatures, you can bake on a gas grill too.
Linda c

Cookie8:

What's the recipe for bannack?

Pdawg

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the links to King Arthur Flour's recipes. I spent some time searching in the Flatbreads section and found quite a few recipes that sounded good, heat or no heat. I understand the comments about standing over a hot griddle baking breads. That's exactly how I feel about grilling outside on a hot day. Maybe I need to rethink my whole idea. Perhaps using my three year old oven wouldn't be so bad...

My 15yo makes better bannock than I do. I'll have to watch her more closely next time. She learned this in her HS foods class:

2 c flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp veg oil
3/4 cup water, or enough to make soft, but not sticky dough.

Knead only enough to make smooth dough. Cut into chunks and flatten with your hands. Cook on an oiled griddle, flipping as necessary.

This is a camping recipe but you can just use it all at once.
5 cups flour
1/2 cup lard
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup oil
Mix dry ingredients, cut the lard in with pastry blender until finely blended. Store in airtight container.
Heat oil in frying pan. Mix 2 cups of bannock mix with 1 cup water. Remove frying pan from heat and carefully pat bannock mixture into the pan.
Return to pan and fry bannock until golden brown, flip bannock and fry other side (10-15 min in total).
You can also cook on stick. Place mixture on stick so it looks like a cattail and cook over open fire until golden brown.
Sorry to force this on you but must be served with butter and jam.

Another option not mentioned is to bake some rolls, small loaves of bread, etc. now and freeze them for those "too hot to move" days ahead.
Wrapped double or triple, they can still be very, very good after a couple of months in the freezer.

That way you can at least minimize the number of times you turn the oven on (practical as well as comfortable).

I almost always have some type of rolls in the freezer. It's also nice and handy when I decide at the last minute to just make a big salad for dinner, I can take out some homemade bread to go with it.

Deanna

Deanna, I also freeze bread, usually because I bake too much to use before it gets stale and I now have bags and bags of bread crumbs in the freezer from the stale bread, LOL.

I also freeze when I'm baking for a family wedding or some such thing, and I need 20 dozen or however many. So, at any given time in my freezer I might have dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, honey wheat, some bread crumbs and maybe a chunk of frozen dough that's going to be calzones or pizza for Ashley.

Thanks for the reminder, I need to stock up for this summer, when I'm so darned busy that I couldn't bake even if it isn't hot!

Annit

Shambo, I live in the Sacramento area too. Since we usually have cool evenings even when the summer days are quite hot, you could cook the bread in your oven in the evening or first thing in the morning. We normally are running our whole house fan during that time to get the house cool for the next day so the heat wouldn't even stay in the house.

I think that cooking something on the stove top heats up the house as much as running the oven, if it is something that takes a while to cook.

Cloud Swift, where in the Sacramento area are you? I'm actually in Placerville now, but it's just easier to say I'm near Sacramento. We lived in Folsom for 17 years before moving "up the hill."

Yup, we do the whole house fan thing too. But the last couple of years we've cut back on our usage. My husband seems to have developed severe allergies, and he cannot deal very well with outside air.

We are in Carmichael - hotter than Placerville, but we have a lot of shade trees around the house which help keep the outside temp in our yard about 10 degrees cooler than the high for the day in the weather report. And our house has 4' deep eaves which help too for the spots where the sun does hit. The attic fans help too. I know because the second summer we were in the house, the second one burned out and our house got hotter until we figured it out. They are fans in the attic that turn on automatically when the attic temp gets enough hotter than the outside temp so that the air in the attic doesn't get super heated.

I have allergies, but not bad enough to make us stop using the whole house fan. I just take my Zyrtec and if it gets bad even with that I use a nasal spray.

I head down to Folsom at least once or twice a week because my mom is in a memory care facility there. You & I should get together for lunch some day. I don't venture into downtown Sacramento very much on my own, but my daughter has an apartment there. So when I visit her, she always wants to take me to a new restaurant. For Mother's Day she took me to brunch at the Firehouse. It was a real treat for me.

Yes, we should get together for lunch some day. I don't get downtown much either. I worked in Roseville for many years and now work from a home office because the company I work for doesn't have offices here.