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A bread cloche is an earthen bell used to bake bread, producing a chewier crust and moist crumb. It retains steam, gets hotter than the oven, and has no hot or cold spots. It can also be used for cooking meat, vegetables and fish.
A bread bell or baking bell is an earthen bell designed to be used in an oven when baking bread. To use a bread cloche, bakers preheat it in the oven, put the bread dough inside, then bake the dough as they normally would. By baking inside the cloche rather than in the oven itself, the bread bakes differently, developing a chewier crust and a chewy, moist crumb. For people making artisan breads, a bread cloche is an appealing alternative to an expensive traditional bread oven.
People have been using cloches in cooking and baking for centuries. The Romans, for example, buried cloches filled with meat and fish in their fires to roast their food, and cloches have also been used in North Africa for things like tagine for centuries. There are two main parts to a cloche: a lower cooking stone and an upper domed lid. Many cloches have baking stones with lips that are designed to trap drippings and juices from foods cooked in the cloche.
There are several reasons to use a cloche for baking bread. For one thing, the inside of the cloche stays moist, retaining the steam released by the bread during baking and producing a moist final product. The cloches also get hotter than the surrounding oven, and the internal temperature of a cloche is very regular, without the hot and cold spots that develop in an oven. All of these factors combine to influence the way bread bakes, changing the texture and flavor of the finished product.
Using a bread cloche is simple enough, but there are a few precautions to keep in mind. Most cloches are sensitive to thermal shock, so you should never put a cold cloche into a hot oven. You should also avoid placing a hot joystick on a cold counter, as it could break. Joysticks should not be sprayed with water, as the sudden release of steam can cause the joystick to break. To wash a bread cloche, wait for it to cool to room temperature and rinse it with water.
A bread cloche doesn’t just have to be used for bread. These cloches can also be used like their historical counterparts for meat, vegetables and fish. However, because these foods can deposit flavors on the cloche, many bakers prefer to dedicate one particular cloche to bread and another to other foods to avoid things like fishy-flavored sourdough.
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