Recipe(tried): How to rise salt-rising bread dough in a crock pot

Here's how to keep the salt-rising bread dough warm during rising.

My crockpot will run on its timer for up to 20 hours. Its internal cooking temperature is around 200 degrees F.

Ok here are the results of my experiment to use a crockpot to keep a bowl of bread dough warm for rising.

The room temperature of my kitchen was 75 degrees F.

I set up my 6-qt oval crockpot as follows. I added 2 inches of 80 degree water to it and placed the lid on it, inverted. I set the crockpot to cook 4 hours on LOW.

Since the glass lid of the crockpot is dome shaped, when inverted, this left a hollow in which to nest a towel and bowl to warm dough in.

I folded a kitchen towel several times until it was about 1-inch thick and placed it on the inverted crockpot lid.

I took a 4-quart stainless steel mixing bowl and filled it with 2-inches of 80 degree F water. I placed the bowl on top of the towel on the crockpot set to LOW. I covered the 4-qt mixing bowl with a metal pie pan.

After 1-hour the water in the bowl was 85-degrees F. After 2-hours the water in the bowl was 90-degrees F. The room temperature was still 75 degrees F.

So it appears you can use a crockpot to keep a bowl of dough warm for rising. Next I will have to experiment with real active bread dough or maybe sourdough starter.

You could probably also use this setup to incubate yogurt.

With a thinner towel or using less folds, and maybe running the crockpot on HIGH you could achieve higher temperatures if desired.