So we sent for them, and along they came. They come in both steel and aluminum versions. This style of pan is available in various sizes and materials, so we decided to get a couple of the smaller ones-essentially one-pound loaf pans-and see how they worked. They’re available from numerous different retailers, leading me to believe that they’re being manufactured by one or two companies in China under different badges or marques for different retailers. Recently, though, one or the other of us spotted the items below on Amazon. After a while we passed the USA pan to friends at a local pub/B&B, and went back to the “regular” loaf pans for the time being. But it was both bigger than we needed-loaves made with it wound up needing to be cut in half to fit in our bread box-and also a bit fractious: sometimes difficult to shut, and also often difficult to open. This was the preferred bread for premium sandwiches, canapes, croutons, and toast.)Īt any rate, the pan we got from the US company was well made, heavy, and baked a good loaf. European bakers were producing so-called pain de mie, “bread made for its crumb”, for at least two centuries previous. (The style turns out to be far older than its use on the railway, though. The first thing we tried was a lidded baking pan/baking tin from a US maker now long associated with this type of bread pan: a “Pullman pan”, so called because it was the type of bread pan used in the kitchens of Pullman train cars. So we started looking for taller-sided baking pans that would give the rising dough more support in the upwards direction. The loaf-in-process sags over the sides of the pan while it’s baking, and afterwards you wind up having to chop the sides off it so that slices will fit into the slots in the toaster… altogether a most unseemly business. With more highly hydrated doughs, this definitely turns into a problem.

In particular, though high-risen loaves with domed tops are undeniably lovely, Peter and I found that about half the time the loaves we made in the standard bread pan were showing a preference (once they’d risen to the pan’s top) for, during the further rise, expanding sideways rather than upwards.

We’ve been using the standard garden-variety North American style of home bread-baking pan for a long time, but there comes a moment when you realize suddenly that you’ve been using the wrong tool to produce the effect you want, and you start looking around for something that’ll do the job better.

Generals rise of the reds letterbox