Being both an environmentalist and a cheapskate, I like to keep the thermostat set a bit cool in the winter and warm in the summer. That’s great for reducing our household energy use, but it’s not so great when I want to bake bread in the winter; yeast prefers a temperature about ten degrees Fahrenheit above what our kitchen maintains.
Professional bakers solve this with an incubator called a proofing box. Of course I could just buy one of those, but see above about “cheapskate.” So, in my typical way, I looked around for items I had on hand, and hacked together a solution.
The components: a cooler, a seed starting heating mat, a meat thermometer, and a cookie rack to hold the bread bowl just above the heating mat. The photos and captions show the results.
It warmed to just the right temperature range, and I can assemble it in less than five minutes. When I was done, I just returned the components to their usual storage places. I’m sure the same thing could be done with an adjustable heat mat, or even a few bottles of hot water, but the seedling mat was what I had.
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