I have both and wanted to see what difference there was (if any) between them.
Banana Bread w/ dried cranberries and black currants.
Same recipe, same measures in both.
Ceramic pan has a blonde interior, cast iron is black ceramic.
Baked at 350° for 30 minutes, rotated left to right and front to back, then 30 minutes more.
The ceramic baked slightly taller. This may be a function of the loaf pan being just slightly narrower than the cast iron. 5" vs. 5 1/8" (127 mm vs 130.175 mm)
I THINK I shared this recipe before, but I find the pan comparison interesting.
At the 30 minute mark I caught our two youngest cats sitting on the stove trying to figure out where the smells are coming from. LOL. Was not fast enough to get that picture!
INGREDIENTS for blackcurrant banana bread:
3 ripe bananas
60g melted butter (1/4 cup or 1/2 a stick)
150g sugar (2/3 cup)
200g unbleached flour (1 1/4 cups)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon baking soda
150g of fresh or frozen blackcurrants (without defreezing before use) (1 1/2 cups)
PREPARATION of blackcurrant banana bread:
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C)
If using dried cranberries or currents, soak them in cold water for 30 minutes, dry fruit sucks the moisture out of the bread otherwise).
Mash the bananas in a bowl
Add the egg and butter
Put all the dry ingredients together into a fine mesh sieve or sifter and sift into the bowl
Mix well with a wooden spoon
Bake in a buttered loaf pan until a toothpick stuck into the bread comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes.
Slice and serve.
Cast iron has a really large thermal capacity (I use it for searing, as an example, because once you get it hot it’ll sear food without noticeably cooling down).
This is generally a bad property for baking since you would, ideally, like to submerge most baked goods in uniform temperatures to produce consistent heating. This is why baking moulds are made of very thin metal. To work around it with a cast iron pan you’d want to partially preheat the pan so that the heat conductivity of the cast iron is as close to air as possible - that’d be extremely hard to do precisely.
It’s a neat experiment though so thank you for sharing it. We do use our cast iron for cooking some breads but they’re quite distinct. We use it for Farinata, Pupusas, and corn tortilla - and it works for these breads because they’re unleavened and using high thermal capacity cookware slightly simplifies the cooking process by making the heat transference more consistent.
I could see the cast iron loaf pan being perfect for a meatloaf. I’ve seen specific pans for cornbread as well, may be worth repeating with a cornbread as it’s a little more sturdy than banana bread.
Cornbread is amazing in cast iron, especially if you preheat first for a while, then put some oil in before immediately throwing in the batter.
You end up with a very nice crust.
I do it the same way as a pizza. Preheat pan on the stove, bake in the oven until it looks good on top, then finish on the stove till I’m happy with the browning on the bottom.
I do the same, except I preheat my oven to the highest temperature, and I just let the pizza cool on the already-hot cast iron. Perfectly crispy crust.
If I throw it on the stove after, it tends to burn.