I bought my All American Sun Oven last fall; however, it's taken me until now to use it. I've been making sour dough bread all winter long in the oven and now that it's nice outside, I thought I'd give the Sun Oven a try.
In theory you can bake in your Sun Oven even during the coldest of winter days so long as the sun is shining and not behind the clouds; however, I found that on such days, I was less than motivated to go outside, set up the Sun Oven, and bake bread.
They were calling for a partly sunny / partly cloudy day today with a high of about 60 degrees Farenheit. It was about 40 degrees out when I hung my laundry this morning and put my bread in the Sun Oven (about 7:30am).
The instructions said to face the Sun Oven in the direction you expect the sun to be in for most of the baking time. Because I left right after to go run errands and wasn't sure when I'd return, I took my best guess. The instructions said that you can't over bake something in a Sun Oven so I took them at their word.
When I returned from my first round of errands about 1 1/2 - 2 hours later, I could smell bread baking when I approached the Sun Oven. The thermostat was reading about 300 - 350 degrees depending on whether the sun was out in full force or not.
Because it was a partly cloudy day and because I normally bake my sour dough bread at 475 degrees (for a crispy crust), I left the bread bake until about 1:30pm in the afternoon.
The bread turned out wonderful albeit with a different texture than normal. The inside was very soft and airy but the crust was not it's usually crusty self. Still delicious though.
When I sat back and thought about it, the only money I had to spend for this loaf of bread was the money spent on a couple of cups of flour and a pinch of salt. (As usual for me, I used saved bacon grease to coat the pan so no additional cost there...) Being the accountant I am though, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I do need to take into account depreciation on the Sun Oven's initial investment...
Now that I've had my first successful experience with my Sun Oven, I plan on using it much more in the near future and want to avoid using my inside propane oven; especially as the weather gets warmer (in the winter, I justified the use of the stove's oven as an "additional" heating source (i.e., I felt that the purchased oven "heat/cost" was not being wasted as it was offsetting my propane furnace heat/cost...).
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