Homemade Bread Warmer
Warm bread is infinitely pleasurable, whether you've bought it or made it yourself. Unfortunately, like most things, it doesn't like to stay warm for very long unless it has help. Commercially made bread warmers are available for sale, but they're usually quite expensive for something that you could easily and inexpensively make yourself in just a few short minutes.
Making Your Bread Warmer
Most commercial bread warmers are simple disks of terra cotta or ceramic extraction. When placed in your oven or microwave and heated, they retain heat for the duration of your meal. They usually feature pretty designs, but you end up wrapping them in towels or napkins and sticking them at the base of your bread basket, so no one ends up seeing them anyway.
That's where your luck comes in, because you can easily repurpose the base of an unglazed terra cotta planter to fulfill this task for all your bread-warming needs. It's necessary that it be unglazed, because you don't want any nasty chemicals leaching into your food, nor fumes poisoning the air as you heat the disks up. Make sure you know that the terra cotta planter base you choose has not been manufactured or otherwise treated with any chemicals that would be harmful to you or your family, such as lead paint.
If you're sure that the unglazed terra cotta planter base you've chosen is reasonably safe, all you'll need to do is heat it up in your oven or microwave for a few minutes. Wrap it in some decorative dish towels or linen napkins, and then place it at the bottom of your bread basket. Arrange your warm bread attractively on top of it, top the bread basket with another napkin or dish towel, and your bread will stay pleasantly warm and tender throughout the duration of your meal.
Terra cotta planters come in many sizes and a few shapes, and you can use this to your advantage too. If you decide that you'd like to use more than one, and perhaps arrange them around the base of your bread basket or bowl, it's very inexpensive and easy to do so. If you happen to chip or break one, the fact that they're so inexpensive makes them very easy to replace. Many home improvement stores sell them separately from the planters they're meant to accompany. Check stores in your area to see whether they sell them this way, and go to town. As of December 2009, terra cotta planter bases tend to cost less than $1, so you can't go far wrong.
Tags: terra cotta, bread basket, cotta planter, terra cotta planter, Bread Warmer, your bread, your bread basket