I'm still using my Tulsi after 7-years and have purchased two other solar ovens - a Sun Oven and a Hot Pot Solar Cooker. They each lend themselves to different uses. I like the electric back-up of the Tulsi so the food will maintain a food safe temperature, which is important if you have intermittent clouds in the area or you can't refocus it as often. The Tulsi has more cooking space, so I can make a number of things at the same time. Loaves of bread bake best in the Sun Oven because there is more height in that oven than the Tulsi. The Hot Pot Solar Cooker is basically a big bowl with a glass lid, so it's great for soup, chili, stew, or cooking a whole chicken.... I recently added the dehydrating, preparedness, and turkey roasting package for the Sun Oven to extend the use beyond what I was already using it for. About the only thing I would caution using a solar oven is to purchase 2 heat resistant 5-fingered gloves, like Ove Gloves, in order to have better control when opening and closing the units, than using hot pads or oven mitts. I also wear sun glasses when getting in and out of the ovens. Reflection of the sun could damage your eyes. When you move food from the oven to the house, sit it on a tray or a rimmed cookie sheet. Spilled hot liquid will fall into the tray or cookie sheet. Check your local public library and see if there are any books on Solar Ovens for more information. I've never heard of one catching on fire, but I suppose anything is possible no matter how unlikely. You need to move it every 20-40 minutes to track the sun, so it's not left unattended for long periods of time. I place my units on a Craftsman metal rolling tool cart and lock the wheels when in use. I use bungie cords to secure it to the top. This will up and out of the way and should help to keep curious pets or wildlife away, and if it's a windy day will help keep it on the cart. Lots of hints and tips since I first posted: -Bake small whole potatoes in a thin black sock. Make sure the potatoes are more-or-less the same size so they cook evenly. I bought black socks for this exact purpose. -Sprinkle a small amount of sugar or brush on a little honey/water on chicken to help it brown. Otherwise it's a little "anemic" looking since it won't brown in a Solar Oven. A sprinkle of paprika or herbs will also improve the "look". -Food cooks faster when the humidity is low, and slower when humidity is high. -ALWAYS preheat your solar oven before adding food. -You can make a whole pan of hard cooked eggs WITHOUT water. Place the eggs in a black enamel pan (no water) and place a lid on the pan. Put in a preheated oven and "cook" for 30-minutes for large eggs, or 35-minutes for extra-large. -Avoid cooking broccoli, cabbage, and sprouts in your solar oven. They develop an awful odor. -In the winter when it's a little more difficult to attain baking temperatures, you can add a few bricks to the oven when pre-heating to help heating and to maintain the heat. -To aid in browning the tops of loaves of bread and to lessen condensation in the oven, buy dark bread pans. Buy them in sets of 2. Use one upside-down as a cover. Secure it over the other pan with binder clips. -If what you are cooking requires constant high heat, refocus the unit to track the sun every 15-minutes. -When using it in the winter, add a layer of insulation on the outside of the unit. -I painted the outside of quart canning jars (which are made of tempered glass) with heat-resistant spray paint (the kind you can use on a bbq grill). I can use them for cooking a variety of foods - grains, legumes, soup, etc. - or use them for heating water in the Sun Oven. You can secure a sheet of foil over the top with some holes punched in it so steam can vent. You can also spray paint a canning lid and ring with the same paint. Punch some holes in the canning lid so steam can vent, and just loosely place the ring over the lid to keep it in place. -Grainlady

I finally made a cake with the Meyer Lemons that fell from my tree. Grainlady, I thought I had coconut oil but I didn't. I looked where I normally shop and wasn't happy with what they had so I wound up using the quick lemon cake recipe that Shambo posted and my lightest, virtually flavorless, olive oil. I still think that the slight coconut flavor of coconut oil with the lemon would be great and I have put it on my phone shopping list. The spicy lime mayo you posted is definitely something we would love and I just looked at their website and one of my local supermarkets sells it, so it's on the list too. Thanks for your help. Sherrmann, coconut oil has been controversial, but from all the reading I've done, I feel it is healthy. We all have to make our own decisions on lots of foods and I will be quick to admit that I often feel there is conflicting research on all sorts of foods. I love butter too, but since my very serious heart surgery I have to be careful about how much I use. Coconut oil has no cholesterol and no sodium and butter is very high in cholesterol. I certainly do eat some butter, but it's in my best interest to limit it which is why my original question was to ask what to substitute for some of the butter. I'm sure this recipe would be fabulously wonderful with the original amount of butter. Lee

As in all things related to bread - it's not so much about right or wrong, it's about choices. If a person makes poor-quality dough, I promise the oven type won't improve it.... I seriously doubt if anyone tested 20 loaves of bread, they could say with any certainty whether it was baked in an electric or gas oven. After years of judging foods at fairs, the oven type has never been a judging standard. There are too many variables to "bread" to use the sweep of a "broad brush" - such as oven types - especially when it comes to modern day home ovens. Having owned all kinds of ovens over the years, demonstrated breads and taught bread classes using high-end professional ovens in a new, state-of-the-art kitchen gallery where hubby works; and my ever favorite Sharp Convection/Microwave (20-minute baking time and NO preheating), as well as my Solar Ovens, I've always managed to make breads of all kinds without any problem - gas or electric - high-end or builder-grade. You mention moisture during bread baking, you can add your own moisture - whatever type of oven you use. I often add moisture to the oven for the final proofing when I use it as a proofing box. I also have a cast iron skillet I add boiling water to for a shot of steam (I use Christopher Kimball's method from "The Cook's Bible). But added moisture (as in high amount of hot steam) during baking isn't correct for all types of breads. Moisture is also expelled from the bread during baking, contibuting to the moisture in the oven. I like to use my covered stone bakers, which holds in moisture for crispy crusts, but I don't want my sandwich breads and enriched breads to be baked in them because I don't necessarily want a crispy crust. Beyond ovens, consider some of these things that also influence the finished loaf. -Using milk instead of water will produce a softer crust. -Baking breads at a lower temperature (325°-350°F) creates a thicker, chewier crust. -Baking breads at 375°-425°F (or higher) produces a thinner, crisper crust. -Egg, butter, or saltwater washes influence bread crusts. Those variables don't depend on the oven type, just the ingredients and temperature. I'm just not an oven "snob". I don't consider oven types a big deal one way or the other when I look at the big picture. To each their own.... And this is the general experience from a person who bakes ALL their breads and baked goods. Not someone who uses their high-end oven twice a year to heat a frozen pizza, but paid $6,000 for it to "look good". Hubby is a VP of a cabinet manufacturing company (34-years) and they handle the "best" when it comes to ovens and other kitchen appliances. Their demonstration gallery is breath-taking. I could have my choice of "the best". We could certainly afford it. But from experience, the oven type is very low on my list of considerations when making good bread. -Grainlady

Sue- Is it the wisdom of the ages or science from the experts? This is what I've read from "experts" - I'm just the person sitting behind the keyboard typing after I've gathered a stack of books by my side. According to Shirley Corriher in "Cookwise", salt plays three roles in dough: It enhances flavor, controls bacteria, and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. She even suggests if the water you are using in your breads is soft (low mineral content), you'll want to be sure to add high-mineral salt - which are natural sea salts, not table salt. The minerals in natural sea salt also play into yeast activity. But what is too much salt... As little as 1/3 t. of salt per cup of flour can be enough to noticeably slow yeast growth. Salt can be added intentionally to slow yeast growth. More salt may be added to dough, such as in a bakery setting when you would want to slow down fermentation until the next shift of workers comes on. The small amount of salt we add to yeast and naturally-leavened breads doesn't really give a salty taste, nor does it contribute largely to the daily sodium intake in a normal diet or normal sodium amounts for people who aren't watching sodium intake, but salt helps to bring out the flavor of the fermentation. As anyone who has ever left the salt out of a recipe can attest, bread without salt is somewhat insipid - but that's because our taste is often trained to like salt and salty flavors. Then there's all the hub-bub about when to add salt. I wait to add salt towards the end of the kneading, along with the fat. I only add the fat early if I want a close crumb - or an almost cake-like texture (for sandwich bread as an example - breads that need to hold together when held in your hands and keep spreads from dripping through). The gluten will have an easier time developing, and will develop quicker (meaning you will need to spend less time mixing and kneading) when you wait to add the salt after gluten development. Once you add the salt, the gluten really tightens up. You can actually feel the difference in the dough. Peter Barham in "The Science of Cooking" says "...the salt acts to modify and control the action of the yeast. Harold McGee in "Keys to Good Cooking A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes" and "On Food and Cooking": Salt contributes to a balanced taste and intensifies aroma in bread, but it also affects structure and texture. Salt makes a dough less sticky, and gluten more stretchy, and the finished loaf lighter. In sourdoughs, salt helps control the growth of acid-producing, gluten-weakening bacteria. [So there's that bacteria mentioned by Shirley Corriher as well.] Salt isn't a leavening agent, but it helps control the leavening agent, as you thought. You can make perfectly good bread with very little or no salt at all (other than the naturally occurring salts in water, other ingredients, etc. - there is always a source for some sodium, even without added salt). But as one book pointed out, when it came to taste tests, people liked breads with more salt than less salt. As a person who doesn't use a lot of salt in their diet, I'd choose less salty flavor - so flavor is subjective. When using less salt in breads, you just need to watch the rise because it will be faster than normal. Peter Barham, in his book, intentionally made bread with lower salt amounts to see how little it could actually be, and he came to the conclusion you didn't need salt at all and that the bread tasted fine. "Fine" isn't what most people expect homemade bread to taste like, however. So you can use a long cold rise to develop flavors, instead of adding salt, or as much salt. And there is the old rule of thumb... If you reduce the salt in a bread recipe, be sure to reduce the yeast as well. So if you cut the salt by 50%, reduce the yeast by 50%. I was also taught in cooking and baking classes that a little salt makes sweet things taste sweeter, hence the ever-present "pinch of salt" in things you wonder what difference did that small amount actually make? There are a lot of factors to keeping bread fresh. Choose enriched breads and sourdough, instead of lean doughs. If you want your bread to stay fresh longer add fenugreek or rosemary because these ingredients are antioxidants, "they prevent oxygen in the air from combining with compounds in the dough, thus acting as a preservative by preventing chemical changes in the dough." I add an acid ingredient to whole wheat breads in the form of ascorbic acid, which is another antioxidant you can add to aid keeping bread fresher longer, but also counteracts the effects of Glutathione in wheat germ, which can damage the gluten strands. Yeast also works better in a mildly acidic mixture. But don't add an acid to naturally-leavened breads because they are already acid enough. My personal favorites for keeping bread fresher longer are coconut oil, agave nectar, and chia seeds - and you won't find these ingredients discussed in any books by "experts". Coconut oil was used in commercial baked goods until the mid-20th century because it helped lengthen shelf-life. As a medium-chain fat, coconut oil doesn't go rancid as quickly as polyunsaturated oils. When pressure was put on the market to use hydrogenated fats and polyunsaturated fats, the shelf-life was shortened, foods went rancid quickly, and they had to find new stabilizers and chemicals to use instead of coconut oil. Coconut oil was used for popping corn at the movies and sports stadiums. They popped large amounts long before it was needed and packed into containers to be used later, and using coconut oil in it kept it fresher longer. Nobody likes stale popcorn.... Coconut oil aids in slowing down mold growth as well. Agave nectar does an excellent job of holding moisture in baked goods, as does chia seeds. Both keep moisture in the crumb of breads from migrating through the crust, so they slow staling - which is an interesting read in and of itself. If you are going to freeze your bread, there is a lot of science about using honey in your breads instead of sugar. The honey will aid in keeping the moisture in the crumb, and I suspect agave nectar has a similar quality. Hope the experts have given you the answers you were looking for. -Grainlady