Pumpkin Bread Through Broken Clouds: A My Solar Oven Cooking Journal

Clouds at 2:05 in the afternoon: the heavy stuff, right over the oven.

Some cooks go exactly to plan. This was not one of them, and it is the more interesting and useful blog post because of it. On September 20, we baked two loaves of pumpkin bread in My Solar Oven while broken clouds kept sliding across the sun, and the oven temperature swung more than 115 degrees over the course of the afternoon cook. Despite this, the bread still came out golden, and the day taught us more about how My Solar Oven handles an imperfect sky than any cloudless cook could have.

This cook also highlights something that makes food cooked in My Solar Oven so delicious: the airtight seal. My Solar Oven traps the steam around the loaves as they bake, so pumpkin bread comes out more moist and delicious than the same recipe baked in a conventional oven. You'll see that steam at work all through this post.

The batter is our pumpkin bread recipe, mixed while the oven preheated. Here is how the afternoon actually went, from the notes we took as it happened.

Setup and Preheat

The conditions at setup were as good as September gets: 84 degrees, 59% humidity, mostly sunny, UV index 7. The oven went out on flat ground, the reflectors came up, and the Quick Align tool put it dead on the sun. Then, while My Solar Oven preheated, we mixed the batter inside and loaded it into two glass loaf pans. (Dark metal pans soak up heat a little faster, but the glass pans were what we reached for, and they did the job.)

Batter in the glass pans, My Solar Oven open and preheating behind the table.

At 1:15 the pans went in with the chamber reading 320°F, sealed up snug. From there, a solar cook with My Solar Oven is mostly patience and small corrections. We expected a little of both.

The Clouds Move In

At 1:35 the oven slid behind a cloud for about five minutes. The chamber temperature eased from 320°F down to about 290°F, which is remarkably gentle: this is what the insulated box and the gasket seal are for. The heat already inside stays put.

By 1:45 the sky was still partly cloudy, the oven read 275°F, and we re-aimed at the sun. Then the heavier stuff rolled in. The photo at the top of this post is the sky at 2:05. By 2:15 the clouds were finally clearing, but the damage was done: the chamber had drifted all the way down to 205°F, and the glass had fogged up with condensation.

1:42: the loaves riding out the cloud stretch, visible through the glass.

Forty-five minutes of broken sun cost the oven about 115 degrees. Here is the part worth knowing: the loaves were fine the whole time. The temperature comes back when the sun does.

Fog on the Glass

By 2:22 the sun was fully back out, and we opened the glass door for one reason: the fog had made the loaves invisible. The chamber was already back up to 240°F, seven minutes after bottoming out. We re-aimed and sealed it back up.

Late in the cook (after letting most of the steam out): steam on the glass, loaves nearly there.

The fog came back by 2:45, along with 275°F and a wall of condensation. We opened the door to release the steam and ran the toothpick test while we were in there: still wet in the center. More sun, then. This is normal behavior, not a problem: a sealed chamber traps steam the same way it traps heat, and moist bakes like pumpkin bread throw off plenty. If the fog blocks your view, let it out on your next re-aim and carry on.

The 2:45 toothpick test: wet batter means more sun.

The Long Climb Back

From there the afternoon settled down and the oven did what ovens do. 260°F at 2:30. 290°F at 3:00. At 3:13 the chamber read 300°F and the loaves came out, tops golden, toothpick clean, twenty-eight minutes after the wet test. Call it two hours start to finish against a conventional 50-minute bake, with about 45 minutes of compromised sun in the middle.

The reveal: golden tops, cracks and all, done by the sun.

What the Day Taught

• The insulation is the buffer. A 115-degree swing sounds alarming, and the bread never noticed. The heat already in the chamber keeps working when the sun steps out.
• Re-aiming pays for itself. We re-aligned four times, and every one of those 30-second checks was a quarter hour of better cooking.
• Fog is normal. Briefly venting it costs a little heat, but ensures you can keep a close eye on the cook.
• Doneness lives in the toothpick, not the clock. Because conditions vary so widely, the cooking times of recipes should be treated as approximations, at best. The cook is done when the food is fully cooked. In this case, the cook went long because of the clouds. If we had only listened to the stated recipe, it would have been undercooked! The toothpick was wet at 2:45 and clean at 3:13, exactly as done as it needed to be.
• Glass pans work. Dark metal would have shaved a few minutes by attracting and retaining more heat, but glassware looks great in photos!

One more thing. With the oven still north of 300°F, we slid a pot of water with a WAPI inside at 3:22 and let the afternoon finish the job. Making water safe to drink without boiling it is its own story, and it is coming to the blog soon.

And the payoff when you slice in: that sealed chamber holds steam around the loaves the whole bake, which keeps the crumb moist, clouds or no clouds. The clouds cost us some time, but they still turned out moist and delicious!

The full pumpkin bread recipe, with timings for both a conventional oven and My Solar Oven, is here on the blog too. If a bright afternoon is sitting in your forecast, this is a good way to spend it, clouds and all.

Sliced and on the board!

My Solar Oven bakes even in less than ideal conditions. Set it out, aim it at the sun, and give the clouds permission to do their worst.