Baking bread in the instant pot

When our oven was broken for seemingly forever, I bought an Instant Pot to pick up the slack.

We lost our pressure cooker in the fire in the utility room a couple of years ago and still hadn’t replaced it. The Instant Pot not only has a pressure cooker but can also bake, boil, air fry, sauté, and even make yoghurt. At the time I was mostly interested in the bake setting as I’ve been making my own bread for a couple of years now and there was no way I was going to go back to commercial salty bread while the oven was out of action.

Googling “Instant pot sourdough” returns lots of results but they’re all articles about how to use the Instant Pot to proof the bread rather than bake it. All of them require an oven for the baking which I didn’t have. But I persisted with it as I had no alternative and just before we got our new oven I was somewhat successfully baking sourdough in the Instant Pot. Here’s what I did.

My usual method for making the dough remained the same.

1. The night before baking mix 100g of sourdough starter with 500g flour (I use Wessex Six Seed Bread Flour) and 500 ml of water.
2. Place a tea towel over the bowl and leave overnight.
3. In the morning when you’re ready to bake, turn the Instant Pot bake setting on to a temperature of 200C and set the timer for 25 minutes.
4. I wet my hands to mould the sourdough into a desired shape before putting it into the Instant Pot (you’ll need to grease the metal dish or use baking paper to prevent it from sticking). I’ve found wetting my hands makes the bread spongier and less dense than if you add more flour to stop it sticking.
5. After 25 minutes, turn the bread over in the Instant Pot, then cook for another 20 minutes at 180 degrees.

The bread gets a little squashed when you turn it over so it’s not perfect but if you don’t flip it then is goes soggy on the bottom. Here’s the last loaf I made before getting the new oven.

I’m back to baking sourdough in the oven again now and it’s definitely the preferable method but I’m so glad to have the Instant Pot, mostly for the pressure cooker. We love beans, peas, and chickpeas but unless you soak in advance and are prepared to boil them for ages you need to use the tinned version. The Instant Pot means I can make a last minute decision to have soup for dinner using Hodmedods All the Peas – a mix of 5 varieties of British grown peas (Red Fox Carlin, Black Badger Carlins, Whole Blue and Yellows, and Marrowfat Peas) – and it’s very quick in the pressure cooker. You bung everything into the pot then set it and leave it. The pressure cooking only takes 25 minutes for unsoaked peas but there’ll be another 10-15 minutes of heat-up time and pressure release at the end. I typically then add some orzo at the end. Here’s a bowl of this delicious soup with a slice of my sourdough.

It’s a cheap meal too because I buy 5kg of the peas and it makes many meals.