Calling all bread bakers and chocolate melters! Check out this teriffic product-to-be

[housewolf]

How many of you have puzzled over finding a warm-enough place to rise your dough? or a way to keep you choclate melted at just the right temperature?

Check out this teriffic product - it's a home bread proofer that folds up small enough to fit into a drawer! Hold a large-sized mixing bowl of dough or 2 loaf pans. It has an adjustable temp control so you can get a gentle cool rise or warmer temp for a quicker rise. Can be used for melting & maintining melted chocoate, or as a plate or bun warmer... or many other uses.

I'd order one of these today... if I could. It's not available yet, but the developer is soliciting potential-customer interest through a survey on his website to try to generate some funding to manufacture the product.

When I first started baking bread, I was living in a very cold house in Colorado, were there was no where in the winter that worked for incubating temperature-sensitive sour dough cultures. Finally my brother had an idean - and he set me up with a foam cooler with a "reptile rock" inside serving as a heat source. It worked well. Other people I've known have used foam coolers or other types of boxes using a light bulb as the heat source. Others use a box with a bowl or pan of warm/hot water. There are many methods that work well.

But none of them have the advantage this box has... it FOLDS UP! and can be stored in a drawer. I'm serious, I'd put my money out for one of these this very evening.

So please, if you will, go check it out and if you are intrigued and/or interested, please take his short little survey. You don't even have to leave your email address if you don't want to. But go check it out.... and let us here know what you think.

http://www.berkshirebread.com/default_y.asp

[Lucinda]

1. I have an induction cooktop so I dont worry about melting chocolate anymore. Sounds great for bread!

Right now I usually balance a bowl on top of my coffee maker to proof breads.
Which works perfectly, unless you want to make coffee or a cat gets too curious!

Will look at it some more in the morning when my eyeballs will focus.

[grasswire]

2. very interesting

I'm forwarding it to a family member who has a product for chefs in design -- he's looking for someone to do specs and a prototype. These people do that.

[GoneOffShore]

3. I found the perfect place to proof dough - overnight in the oven with the light on.

No extra gadgets.

[Lucinda]

4. I wondered about that, but I don't have a thermometer to test the temp

We have a wall oven and it seemed like the bowl would be too close to the bulb.
Seems like a perfect way to do do it.

[GoneOffShore]

5. I've got a Blue Star 36"

Takes a full sheet pan and the temp with the light on runs around 90 - 95.

[eridani]

6. Won't work if you have no access to natural gas n/t

[GoneOffShore]

7. I mean the actual oven light -

Not the pilot light.

My oven doesn't have a pilot light.

[eridani]

8. Well, let's put it this way. My Sears oven manual lists the Sears address as

Chicago 6, Illinois. There is no oven light. Good to hear that there is sufficient output from yours, though.

[GoneOffShore]

9. Ah ha! My mom had one like that.

But her's had a pilot light.

That Kenmore cooked from 1955 to 2000 - Not all the burners were working by then, but it still worked.

And the stove before that? I think it was made in 1925. And we had an ice box that you had to put blocks of ice in to keep the milk from spoiling (I think they got rid of that in 1951 but I was only 3 at the time).