For anyone who doesn’t use cast iron yet, man you’re missing out. The one I bought had a bit of a rough surface, so I just sanded it down with a palm sander and seasoned it well which took about 4 cycles in the oven. It’s the smoothest, most durable non-stick pan I’ve ever used. If you want to do the same, bring it in to the space and I’ll show you the way.
Just wipe it out, no dishwasher. It should always have a slight oiled seasoning. If you cook something that burns/sticks just throw some water in it while it’s hot and it’ll come right off.
If you ever need to clean it in the sink, then dry it off right after with a towel, heat it up a bit on the stove to evaporate any water and wipe with a bit of oil.
It sounds like a lot of work but it actually is 10x less than any other pan trust me.
When you buy cast iron, it comes pre-seasoned. The reason the one I bought was rough was because it was seasoned with a single heavy spray of baked oil, rather than many light seasoning layers. Lodge comes smoother probably because they do 2-3 lighter seasoning layers.
The absolute best finish will come from resetting the seasoning by sanding it, then doing 4-5 very light layers of seasoning yourself. (Takes a few hours in and out of the oven)
I also have a well-seasoned old lodge fry pan that I really like. For a while I was on a vintage cast iron kick - attempting to hunt down a rusty old pan that I could restore. I’m amazed by how long they last.
Back in the day we all started with the same raisins - and made ginger beers. Then we sampled the results together. @wander had quite an amazing brew and I still think he should quit his job and make ginger beer.
It would be fun to do the same with sourdough - especially if we are all using Tristan’s starter.
yay Rob! I’m thinking about what to make next. Tempted to do some kind of rosemary bread and also thinking of using bread flour this time (although I have a huge bag of all-purpose here).
Re: flour, I use 85/15 all purpose/whole wheat + salt and a bit of added wheat gluten. Bread flour is just all purpose with extra gluten. I have a huge bag of it that I’ll never go through, I’ll divy up some containers for y’all to experiment with if you like.
I have a bunch of 2oz jars that I’ll fill with starter and put in the fridge. To get it going just mix the entire thing with equal parts water/flour by weight, around 100-200g of each
Thanks for starting this thread! My fiancee and I have been making simple flatbreads and bread machine bread (terrible I know, but we didn’t have an oven for a while), but we would love to up our game. All of your tips and tricks are greatly appreciated.