I’ve set off the smoke detector in my apartment(s) twice. The first time was in Smyrna, after I received a gift of three cast-iron skillets from my parents. The skillets hadn’t seen much use or care for several years, so I began by cleaning and reconditioning them. The idea with cast-iron cookware is to create a non-stick surface of burnt fat, so the purpose of conditioning it is to provide that initial layer, to char, blacken, soak and burn the various lipids into the pores of the metal and provide a layer above the iron for food to slide around and sometimes pick up the flavor of whatever was cooked before. That tale is detailed elsewhere, but the basic story is that I set the oven on fire.
Today I attempted a sourdough rye bread. My bread-fu is still pretty weak. The only bread I’d made before this that was even edible came from a recipe on the back of the flour bag. It was a whole wheat bread, and I guess it was ok. It wasn’t as good as something you can get at the store, but it was probably average for something baked by someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. As for the rye bread, I don’t know. There are a lot of variables in making the sourdough, first of all, and I don’t have the experience to know how to adjust for them. I think my kneading technique could use some work. The rye dough was very dense, and I think it could have been mixed and kneaded better with an electric mixer, which I don’t have nor particularly want. The bread came out pretty thick, which is expected, but I don’t know that it rose enough. In all, it’s usable, but it could be a lot better.
One of the instructions in the recipe I used was to leave a pan full of water in the oven to steam it up while the bread bakes. I used one of my cast-iron skillets for this, and by the time the bread got going all of the fat and whatnot on the pan started to burn off and set off the smoke detector. I guess that was kind of a bad idea.