Store bought dough is not worth the gas it takes to cook it....not when home made simple dough is so really really easy to make.

You might try the Appliances forum. I've never used store bought dough. More people with combi-steam ovens hang out in Appliances.

I'd add a Zojirushi bread machine to your kitchen, and a few good bread machine cookbooks, so you can make the dough yourself.

Linda hit the nail on the head in her comment. Using frozen dough is like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Frozen dough is fairly unstable. Commercial frozen dough companies have to add a LOT more yeast to it because a good percentage dies off while frozen. The texture and flavor are all affected by being frozen as well.

I have a Miele Combi steam and while from time to time I do enjoy making dough by hand, most of the time I use my bread machine for making dough. I use a very simple, basic recipe:

- 100% flour - usually 500 g

- 60% water

- 2% yeast (dry)

- 2% salt

I put the water and yeast in the bread machine, let it dissolve a little, then add the flour and start the dough program. After about 5 min I add the salt (I don't add salt in the beginning because it kills the yeast; after the yeast is mixed with the flour it's ok).

It takes about an hour and a half, rising time included. When it's done, I take the dough out, form it and stick it in the oven (this part you'd have to do with frozen dough anyway). Makes perfect bread every time :)

Thanks for the input everyone. I've been interested in making bread ever since we got the CSO, but the recipes I've seen seem like a lot of work, and a lot of cleanup as well. We also don't have a Kitchen Aid machine - just a basic food processor.

I had assumed that the dough available in supermarkets wasn't very good, but it seemed to me that the dough used by stores and restaurants to bake in-house might be of a better quality. I found a few places that supply dough to commercial establishments, and their instructions were usually something along the lines of thaw, proof, bake with the desired amount of steam. That seemed like something I could handle. I work from home, so it would be easy enough to take a break to stick something in the oven to proof, and then later put it in the CSO to cook. I don't really have the time for all of the work required to make bread from scratch though.

Getting a bread machine to make the dough and cooking it in the CSO is an interesting idea, but we don't have a whole lot of excess counter space, and it seems like a bit of a waste to buy a whole bread-making machine, and then just using it to mix dough. Are there any good machines on the market that just make the dough?

All bread machines make dough, the option is to bake in them. Most of the bread machine owners around here use them for dough only. When you make cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, burger and hot dog buns, English Muffins, free-form loaves..... NONE of those are baked in the bread machine. I baked a loaf in my machine maybe a total of 5-6 times in two decades of use, and one of those times was to check how much it cost to bake a loaf of bread in it using a Kill-A-Watt Meter. It was cheaper to bake two loaves in my SHARP Microwave/Convection Oven than in the Zo, and I could bake two loaves at once in the SHARP in 25-minutes without ANY preheating, which is much faster than in the Zo.

The Zojirushi Bread Machine has been used at the King Arthur Test Kitchens for making dough - because it does an excellent job. Years ago in their catalogue (catalog) they had a picture of 2 loaves of 100% whole wheat bread in a side-by-side picture, using the same recipe. The short squatty loaf was mixed in a stand mixer (stand mixers actually aerate the dough too much) and the tall loaf (dough made in the Zo, but baked in a loaf pan) was at least 1-inch taller than the one from the stand mixer.

Not all bread machines are able to make dough using 100% whole wheat flour, and especially freshly-milled whole wheat flour. It takes a quality motor for that task. I milled all my own flour from grains/seeds/beans for making bread, including making naturally-leavened breads (aka sourdough). That's why I recommend a Zojirushi. I have two of them.

You can also find bread recipes that you can make in a Food Processor. It's amazing how many people miss that chapter in their user-manual..... And there are also Food Processor Cookbooks (check your local library) for bread recipes in them.

-Grainlady

What kind is your basic food processor. I make 2 loaves at a time in the food processor.....zip zap and it's done....put in covered bowl, let rise about 1 1/2 hours, turn over and punch down, rise another hour, shape, rise again for about 40 minutes and bake.

You might want to try some of the no-knead bread recipes like Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Link to master recipe below:

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/10/22/the-new-artisan-bread-in-five-minutes-a-day-is-launched-back-to-basics-updated

Those sorts of recipes rely on long fermentation to replace the need to knead. The recipe is very easy, requires on a bare minimum of equipment and is a great place for a novice break maker to start. I would suggest reducing the am't of salt called for in the recipe, though.

That reminds me of this recipe: very similar, except no refrigeration required. Haven't tried it yet myself, but I plan to :)

4 ingredient Artisan Bread

Thanks everyone. We have a Cuisinart food processor and my wife tells me it will make bread dough, but the prospect still seems a bit daunting to me. A bread machine might be a possibility at some point, but I'd want to make sure I was going to use it often before investing that kind of money. We would also have to figure how to fit it into our available counter space.

The artisan bread in five minutes a day sounds very interesting though. My only concern is that the Wolf CSO only goes up to 445 degrees, and the bread/steam options are not designed to work with preheating. Instead they recommend lining their solid metal pan with parchment paper and putting the dough in an unheated oven. There's a Gourmet mode which will then cook the bread automatically (46 min for a medium brown crust). Do you think this would work with the 5 min artisan bread? I could always preheat the oven with a pizza stone and then turn the steam on/off manually, but I'd have to figure that part out for myself. i'll cross-post this question on the Appliance Forum as well.

What model and size of Cuisinart do you have? If it's at least a 7 cup capacity....It's beyond simple.
3 3/4 cups of AP flour...measure by spooning into the measuring cup
1 1/2 tsps. salt
2 yeast packets ( don't worry about if it's instant or bread machine yeast or whatever. just granular yeast)..or one round tablespoon if you don't have packets.
1 1/2 cups water>
Put all but the water into the FP, pulse to mix and turnon to process and slowly add the water through the feed tube, taking about 30 seconds to add the water. If the dough does not hand together and seems crumbly, add a little more water a teaspoonful at a time, If the dough seems more like batter and doesn't clean the sides of the FP and hang together....add more flour a teaspoon at a time.
Dump into a greased bowl, cover with oiled foil or saran, ;let rise until double punch down, rise again, dump out, shape into 2 loaves, place on a cookie sheet covered with silpat, parchment or oiled and covered with corn meal, cover again with that oiled saran and let rise. slash with a razor blade ( or a box cutter)....the oven should be preheating to 425....dump in a half a glass of ice cubes and add the risen bread....bake for1 0 minutes and turn down to 375 without opening the oven door....and bake another 20 minutes.

Greasetrap, I had the same dilemma with my CSO :) I was used to high temps and preheating before so putting bread in a cold oven was a no-no! But I finnaly tried it and it turned out AMAZING! And if it doesn't...well, it's just a little flour, yeast and water, not much harm done :)

As I said, I haven't tried the 5 min Artisan bread, but I plan to make it these days and will tell you the result.

The best I can recommend is to find a local baker and buy their dough. Well no the best would be for you to try a version of the no knead recipes that you can find online. But I know a local bakery near me sells pizza dough. Not sure about bread. Worth trying if you aren't into making your own.

That said the reason everyone is suggesting making your own is that bread dough can be very simple to make - flour water salt yeast. The tricky part is the is learning kneading rising proofing shaping ie getting used to handling dough. Dough is alive and needs to be kept that way until baking. By buying the dough you would have less understanding of how that dough can be expected to behave.

In any case I hope you make some bread and enjoy!

Happy New Year!!!

I have made the no knead bread....the recipe that cooks in a preheated cast iron covered pot. It's a very soft dough...it needs the pot for holding it in shape as it bakes. Also, it goes into a screaming hot oven and a screaming hot pan.

Kneading bread isn't hard....but if you have a Cuisinart or a stand mixer, there is no need to hand-knead bread at all>
Besides, if you buy the dough, you haven't made bread....you have just tested your oven>
$.69 worth of stuff and 10 minutes of your time and you will have bread dough to test your oven with.

Did this oven come with a new house? Was it a gift? I'm asking because it seems like the kind of thing serious bakers buy after they've already done a lot of work with bread rather than those wanting to avoid working with dough. Maybe it was bought for some other reason? Regardless, don't be afraid of dough.

People have been baking bread and adapting it to the tools and conditions at hand for centuries. You take some flour and water, add a little salt and maybe introduce some leavening or not, and you can make a seemingly endless variety of things all called bread. If the pioneers made bread, you can make bread. If my 19 yr old video binging, game playing college student is learning to make bread, you can do it.

Now, that said, it can be confusing. There are different schools -- traditional techniques that are still needed to make sandwich loaves and enriched breads (brioche, challah and such). That's where folks like me learned to make bread, and I think those skills and the comfort level with working with dough still serve you well when working with other types of dough. But there are a lot of people who have been introduced to making bread through no-knead breaed techniques -- and boy, , are there a host of books to consult on that. Artisan Bread in 5 Minues a Day is possibly the most approachable to the average person. I made some good bread with their basic recipe -- my son loved the ciabbatta. But there are literally dozens more. A lot of the recipes use Dutch Ovens, Lodge multi cookers or some other covered method (I've seen folks use a clay pot or metal bowl upside down on a baking stone to capture steam from the bread and get much of the result your CSO will give -- often without buying anything new.

The only store bought dough I've ever seen is frozen white bread (Rhodes?) or Sister somebody's dinner rolls. I know some pizza places will sell you the pizza dough, and some bakers have had success buying some starter from a bakery, but that's all I've ehard of. That frozen bread dough is the opposite of anything that you would want to take advantage of your CSO. It is soft white dough designed to be baked in a loaf pan or possibly divided into soft rolls. It will never be a crusty artisan loaf -- and it sound like that is what you want from the CSO.

I have a Wolf convection oven without the steam. I would trust their recommendations (maybe they have a basic recipe?) as a starting point. I'd never used a convection roast cycle before -- had always preheated to a high heat to sear and then reduced the heat when we put in the meat. The convection roast preset is a lower temp, but a bit higher than we'd used. Since this was different, we tried the preset. Roasts a whole chicken in an hour or a little more, crispy skin and juicy inside with no fuss. Our turkeys have been so easy and so good -- I digress, but hope you get the point. Explore the options. You should be very happy.

You might find Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day at your library (and it's on Amazon, including Kindle if not). I would suggest cecking that out and trying to work with what you already have before buying equipment (make half their recipe and you shoulf have something that will hold it without buying large bins or clearing a fridge to hold a 5 gallon drum). After trying it, you can see if you need to buy anything new. Very litle expense -- very little effort really, and you might decide you like woring with dough enough to try the old school stuff too. I like both.

Lascatx, i had the CSO installed last summer as part of my kitchen renovation. It's not a professional oven by any means. Overall, it costs about $1,000 more to install aCSO and traditional oven, than it does to install a double oven. There are a number of discussions about them on the GW Appliance forum. Aside from baking bread, the CSO is very useful for a number of different things, like reheating food, low temperature steaming of fish, etc.

Based on CI_Lantro's recommendation, I did buy the 5 minute Artisan book and made my first boule yesterday. It didn't come out perfect, although my wife and daughter loved it. i hope to post pictures and ask for advice later tonight.

A wonderful dear friend (Ohiomom) on this forum sent me one of her extra bread machines after mine broke. It is not one of the fancy ones, but it still makes perfectly good bread dough. The dough part is not actually rocket science, but it is fussing with dough which I hate but the machine does that part so I often make dough with it. I don't keep my bread machine on the kitchen counter, it is stored away in bottom cupboard and I just get it out when I want to make bread. I live alone, so even ONE loaf of bread takes me forever to eat up. Home made bread dough freezes, but also, home made BREAD freezes really well. And if you do artisan or free form loaves, you can just make rolls pretty easy, they are basically small loaves of bread. My bread machine was missing its paddle for a while so until I got one, I made the dough in the Cuisinart, and that was pretty easy too. The biggest difference is instead of the machine timing everything for you, you have to time it yourself. So you have to watch over it more, and turn the machine on and off, but basically the two appliances are very similar when it comes to dough. And then there is the 5 min. a day artisan method which has the yeast do most of the work over time for you. As Lascatx says, you'll have to fuss with it a bit to find a couple of recipes you like and work for your style, but after that, it is a snap. After futzing with sourdough and bigas and sponges and poolishes, I find that basically for home made bread I like basic multi grain or oatmeal bread. If I want a sour taste, I use a yogurt or sour cream recipe. I make rolls since that works best for single me.

Edited to add: there are videos and lots of web sites and tips on making bread dough with a food processor. Same with the artisan method. I would encourage you to try the basic food processor method, it is a perfectly good one. Just google "making bread using a food processor."

Greasetrap, I am sooo happy that you tried making bread and got good reviews from the family. Ya' know, I've been making bread for a lot of years and I've never managed to pull off a 'perfect' loaf. But every single one has been edible and every single one has been better than that stuff they try to pass off as 'bread' in the grocery store.