Solar Baked Flat Bread

by Christa Upton
(South Dakota)

Recipe Four with the Solar Hot Pot

Solar Baked Flat Bread

Warm flat bread is one of my favorite snacks! Today I am making plain bread, but it can be dipped into salsa, marinara, sour cream dip, or guacamole; spread with tuna salad or cheese spread; or of course served with meals such as chicken curry, stew, etc.

I don’t do well with baking soda much or even a lot of yeast, so I like to make flat bread with eggs. It gives it a softer/nicer texture than trying to do completely unleavened bread (although I have done that, too).

I am doing plain bread since I am experimenting with the Hot Pot. If this works, another day I’ll probably try adding things to the bread!

10:00 am—make dough by mixing:

2 c. unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. olive oil
drizzle of honey
1 egg
enough water to make a soft dough

Knead just a bit for dough to come together. Pat into ‘cakes’ about 3 inches across and 1/8 inch thick. Brush each piece of bread with more olive oil.

11:00 am—bread pieces: gently lay in the bottom and somewhat up the sides of the Hot Pot (don’t press them onto the Pot or they might stick to the Pot?).


Set a round baking rack in the top and fill with more bread.


Put lid on Solar Cooker and wait and see what happens! LOL

(Refrigerate the rest of the dough until it can be baked later.)

I really am not sure how this is going to go, so I will check on the bread and be back later.... I’m back! (Did you miss me? LOL) After 30 minutes, I peeked and shook the moisture off the lid into the grass. The dough was ‘warm’ but still pretty doughy. Checked again after another 30 minutes—still doughy but cooking I think! It’s starting to smell good now! Now I’m going to let it go another hour and see how it does. So that was....

11:30 am—open lid, shake moisture into grass, quickly cover again.

12:00 pm—open lid, shake moisture into grass, quickly cover, adjust to sun, set timer for one hour.

1:00 pm—check to see if bread is cooked through by taking a piece out (with tongs) and breaking in half—be careful, the bread will probably be really hot (I burned my fingers just a bit!) The inside should look ‘baked’ and fairly uniform in color. (If it is not done, the inside will be darker in color and raw or doughy-looking.) If not done, cover, adjust to sun, and keep checking every 15 minutes or so. Ours was done at 1:00.



Okay, some interesting developments—the bread on the sides of the Hot Pot browned on the bottom of each piece (yum!), though not on the top, and were generally softer than the bread on the rack. The very middle piece of bread in the bottom center of the Pot was soggy—oops. :) Likely the moisture collected from the lid etc. and ran down and soaked that middle piece of bread. So, next time I will try a lightly crunched ‘disc’ of foil in the middle to keep the other pieces of bread up out of the middle and let the moisture collect under it. Or, if I could find a baking rack with a smaller circumference, that would work even better.

Well, not bad for the first try—only one piece of soggy bread (with a little bit of sog on the edges of a few other pieces). I might try the soggy piece dipped in marinara sauce. (Or maybe I’ll feed it to the dog! LOL)

And, the bread done on the rack is so good!! It has a nice olive oil and nutty whole wheat flavor. Our kids say it tastes a little like elephant ears (like at the fair) but so good that it doesn’t even need cinnamon and sugar—wow, what a compliment to the chef! :) (But if you like cinnamon and sugar, I bet that would be good on it.)