Print the instruction card!  Making Bread in a Wonder Oven

I love my wonder ovens, I keep two sets of them handy for everyday use and I currently have six other sets put away for our preps (for their usefulness if we didn’t have power).  They’re essential, in my opinion, in being able to cook if the power is out because they drastically reduce the amount of cooking fuel which is needed if solar cooking isn’t an option.  At the same time, they’re great to use in every day life to cut down on heating up the kitchen, keep things frozen or cold (think picnics and getting frozen items home from the store in the summertime) and as a non-electric slow cooker.

Definition of a Wonder Oven (also called a Wonder Box):

A Wonder Oven is a heat retention cooker.  Due to two “bean bag” type pillows which are filled with styrofoam beads, it holds whatever temperature goes into it for many hours.

The insulating properties of the Wonder Oven means it can keep food at a high cooking temperature for hours, or inversely keeps cold foods cold and frozen foods frozen.  This means that you use a fraction of the energy/fuel that you normally would’ve needed to cook or possibly save frozen items from being wasted in a power outage!

Each wonder oven has two pillows — one that’s larger which fits under the pot and one that’s smaller that fits over it.  The pillows (mine are much more loosely filled than some other styles of Wonder Oven Pillows, some are able to stand on their own without a container) are used inside an 18 gallon plastic container in order to keep them snuggly surrounding the pot I’m cooking with.

Getting One for Your Preps

There are two ways to add this wonderful tool to your preps:  sew one for yourself, or order one already made.

To make one for yourself you can sew the pillows using this pattern (I actually made mine from some old table cloths) or buy them.

Update 1/30/16:  Coming soon!  My Food Storage Cookbook  will be offering a number of ways you can get a Wonder Oven at a DIY discounted price (with a number of options from “do it completely yourself” to delivered partially completed to make one yourself).  I’ll even arrange to have the beads shipped to you! Additionally, there will be a convenience priced option (for those who’d rather not mess with the beads at all) where you can buy one completely finished if that’s what you prefer.  Keep an eye on new posts!

Also, here’s a printable quick cooking guide I’ve put together which includes the basic rules and “how-to’s”!

(Click the link below)

Cooking with a Wonder Oven

I use my wonder oven all the time. I make bread in it as well as many other things.  With two wonder ovens, the other night I cooked chicken in one and some potatoes in the other for dinner. I left them all day to cook and never had to worry about burning.  One of the things I love best about it is the food is ready to go when you are and it never burns!

Here’s a list of some of the things you can make using a wonder oven which you’ll find here on the blog (visit this archive to find all the recipes):

• Bread
• Soups
• Any dish requiring a simmer time
• Whole grain cereals (Steel Cut Oats)
• Tamales
• Lasagna
• Small cuts of meat
• Rice/ Grains
• Beans
• Yogurt
• Muffins
• Quiche

In this post I’ll be demonstrating how to make some of the most excellent bread in your Wonder Oven.  I think you’ll agree,  it’s probably the most moist bread you’ve ever tasted!  Plus, kids love it because it bakes with out any crusts.  From a preparedness perspective, I love it because knowing this method (and having the tools) means I can make bread for my family even if my sun oven isn’t operational due to cloudy skies.  This without using any more fuel than is needed to bring a pot to boil for 10 minutes.

Another reason I love it?  Food can be left for hours “baking” without any worry of it burning.  The bread made below was baked (or more appropriately “steamed”) for 6 hours. At a minimum, it takes 2 hours to bake, but I’d had a very busy day this particular day and didn’t have time to pull it out of the Wonder Oven until later in the evening. Still, I ended up with perfect bread.

Bread Containers

There are a couple of containers you can choose from in order to bake bread in your Wonder Oven.

The first is using large 46 oz juice cans. I’ve found that due to their tendancy to rust I have to replace them fairly often.  Another disadvantage is that they are very light weight which means that you have to be ready to secure the cans so that they don’t tip over in the boiling water.  Using juice cans turns out nice rounded loaves which when sliced are about the size of a hamburger bun. The advantage to using the cans is that you can get started making bread without purchasing anything more than a couple large cans of juice.

After using it quite a bit I realized I wanted a more permanent container for making bread than the juice cans because the cans have a tendency to rust after a few uses.  At first I found a tall cylinder shaped pot with a lid, an ‘asparagus steamer’, which worked quite nicely but was very pricey. Rather than having two juice cans of bread, the one larger pot bakes two loaves worth of dough at once.  It makes a bigger loaf; when done, I cut the bread in half and serve in large semi-circle slices.  Even though it holds more dough I’ve never had a problem with having to increase cooking time as compared to the juice can method.  As long as it cooks a minimum of 2 hours it’s been fine.

**UPDATE:  an all around better Wonder Oven bread container (because it’s so much more affordable) is a 3.5 quart Bain Marie pot.  This sized pot will hold two recipes worth of dough (same as the asparagus steamer you see below) – or – (2) two quart containers may be used in the same way you see the two juice cans below (one recipe in each pot).  This Stainless Steel Bain Marie Pot (purchased w/ lid separately) is available for the 2 quart pots.  You can also find many different sizes of bain marie pots at restaurant supply stores.  Read my review of these containers here in this post for more details.

How to make “wonder bread” (using a Wonder Oven)

Juice cans

The asparagus steamer that I use

Allow the bread to rise once in the mixing bowl and remember to
grease the cans before putting the dough in them.

With your bread containers half filled, fill the larger pot with warm to hot water and
allow the dough to rise again, 25-30 minutes.

Allow the dough to rise until it’s almost to the top of the cans.

Bring the pot to the stove to boil for 10 minutes with the lids on.

Place the pot into the Wonder Oven to bake for atleast 2 hours.