It would (usually) be heavier than carbon steel so I’m a little baffled that yours was so heavy. Wirecutter does great reviews and instead of linking to individual pans or skillets, here is the master category with links to all of them. We’ve recently bought a few to replace our non-induction friendly equivalents. Out of everything in our kitchen we used on a stove, there were only 3 things that wouldn’t work. Not bad.
@ArmandoPenblade Thanks for some of those links. I would love that clear brilliance container (or 3,) and the same for some new bakeware pans. My GF picked up a baking sheet a while back that is awesome in that it covers a very good amount of the inside of the oven, maybe about 3" overlap on all sides. It’s so nice to cram that think with roasting veggies since we don’t have to juggle more than one pan in/out of the oven. Previously though, my old oven had hot/cold spots and it wasn’t ideal for a large sheet like that but with some air movement from convection it’s become our #1 used thing for roasting or baking a lot of stuff. I know a full sheet pan won’t fit in most home ovens so I’m guessing it’s close to a 3/4?
Diddums what all kinds of loaves does it make? And is this using specific paks made for the bread or using normal ingredients you toss in there?
Standard ingredients. The specific recipe (I’ve made it so many times I’ve memorized it by now) is:
225g high gluten flour
25g low gluten flour
5g salt
25g oil (I had been using the oil from a heretofore very unloved jar of natural peanut butter, now I’ve just switched to vegetable oil)
175ml cold water, 5 degrees C
1.5g instant dry yeast.
Everything is out of stock on Amazon, but it looks to be a variant on this guy. The biggest difference I’ve seen compared to other bread makers seems to be the yeast dispenser, which if you don’t use absolutely dry yeast apparently has a tendency to clog, from the reviews. But I do think the yeast is distributed more evenly
I have an All Clad 12 SS pan and it’s quite light, but kind of thin. The Lodge CS is thick, Amazon says it weighs 4.67 lbs. I was looking at more expensive CS pans last night and they were all around that weight or heavier. I guess people on YouTube just make them look lighter than they are. Or I am really weak.
I guess I didn’t think of them as heavy since I only have one carbon steel item in my kitchen and it’s a wok which is fairly thin carbon steel. I have SS saute pan that is a beast and multiple cast iron skillets, all of which are heavy. I had thought my wok was, “light,” but grabbed it just a bit ago to confirm what you’re saying. The more you know!
Thanks for the link! I had a bread machine years ago but it got lost in moves along the way. For now I’ll keep attempting homemade bread but the set-and-forget kind of option intrigues me.
Initial cost aside, I do quite like it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it used less energy than having to preheat and then bake in a full oven, but then again the size of the loaf is also much smaller (roughly half a supermarket loaf.)
From their blurb: But its digital controls go much further, offering settings for white, whole wheat, multigrain, and French (crisp crust, open texture) breads, each made according to what’s best for that particular style.
Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. Airy, but with a chewy baguette like crust. I can and have been eating this every day for the last coupla weeks.
I guess it depends on what you mean by commercial, but I suspect you’re right that most residential range/oven combos don’t go higher than that. 25,000 is certainly stronger than my range’s strongest burner (18,000). It just falls well short of my relatively cheap backward burner, which does make the satisfying jet engine sound.
18000 is strong even for a grill, much less a range. That’s a big burner I’m betting!
Outdoor stand-alone burners would go above that, like turkey fryers, etc. I have a high powered beer kettle burner for outside only use that runs off propane and does 80,000 in efficient mode and 140,000 in high power mode. But I’m not sure I’d want to drag that whole deal outside just to fire up a wok for what … less than 5 minutes?
I’ve certainly considered using it for some outdoor cooking a couple of times but just can’t get beyond what I’d actually cook on it, beyond 15 gallons of wort boiling for an hour.
Since we now have a synced burner (on one side the front and back ones can be synced for a large cooking vessel,) we picked up a nice griddle. Here’s hoping we use this a bit.
Oooo, envy!! I have a crappy Walmart electric griddle from ages back that can barely brown a pancake, much less crust up a burger, but it’s never seemed feasible to stretch a proper one out across my crappy and mismatched/non-synced low power electric burners.
To be fair, I haven’t used it yet. It may be gimicky, who knows. But I’m thinking if anything -could- do it besides gas, maybe it’s induction. And I think it would work spread across standard burners but you’d have hot spots for sure.
Do you have a baking steel yet? I have one that is flat for pizza on one side, and the other side has a ridge for griddle operations. You can throw it on two burners, crank them up, and get that sucker hot. It weighs something like 22lb, so it’s a huge hunk of metal/heat once it’s hot.
I have fantasies about sous vide steak that I sear off on that sucker, but I haven’t purchased nice steak in forever.
I have one, but have barely used it. The lack of sides means it makes a huge mess vs something like a cast iron skillet. It’s also quite heavy, as you noted, and, to me, more of a pain to clean.
We’re thinking pancakes or quesadillas to start. From there I wouldn’t mind it for a few other things where the room will help, maybe a pressed Cuban sandwich or being able to do bacon, eggs and hashbrowns all at once, or cheesesteak, etc. I could see a few of the things outside of the need for a saute pan or skillet with higher sides. For sure though, you know my love for my cast iron skillets. I will ALWAYS start there, then go for something else only if it won’t fit or work well.
It wasn’t horribly expensive so if it’s a fail … meh. We’ll find another home for it.
I had a strange thought the other day since I was given a griswold skillet that the thing is so old it’s seen gas, electric, a camp fire or two, on the grill and now on an induction cook top. Talk about made for life.
Good tip and I’m sure that was one learned from trying it. I’ll hold off on the bacon for a bit too until I know how those low sides do. I bake my bacon a lot anyway.
I’d be interested in your experience with this. What specific griddle did you buy? We got a new stove after I made a failed attempt at DIY repair of our old one. The new one has paired burners to support a griddle. My wife thought it was a nice feature but we don’t actually have a griddle to take advantage.
Funnily enough, I only have a pizza stone myself. The steel was more “gift for friend who is awesome” than “thing I’d allow myself to splurge on given how insanely rarely I bother making pizza” level :)
It’s one of those inner/out ring jobs. It’s not terrible for indoor wok cooking, but I obviously prefer my outdoor one (54,000 BTU) for any serious wok cook (e.g., pad see ew and such).
Not used yet but I’ll post here once we do. I’ll link it below, it goes on sale often (as does most cookware) though so search around even outside of Amazon. Also of note, it’s stainless steel with non-stick interior. We need the stainless to get it to work on our range. It’s not overly heavy but if you didn’t need stainless or heavier I’m sure you could find alternates. Cuisinart also makes a single burner job that’s large and square which might be better suited if anyone needs that instead.
