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It seems Aldi is on a bread-baking kick. Just the other week, the discount grocer sold a bread maker in its middle aisle. Electric bread makers are a pretty standard kitchen appliance. You dump in the ingredients, turn it on, and it mixes and bakes a loaf without any additional work on your part.
Now, Aldi is selling yet another way to make homemade bread. This time, it’s a cast iron bread oven. This heavy piece of kitchen hardware looks like a dupe of a Le Creuset Bread Oven, which goes for $240 to $300 depending on what color you purchase. Let’s just say the Aldi knockoff is a lot cheaper.
You might be wondering how a cast iron bread oven works. Simply put, it’s used for making rustic loaves. You place the bread dough inside the cast iron bread oven, which you then put inside your conventional oven, and the steam inside the bread oven helps to produce a nice tall loaf with a thin and shiny crust.
You can get a similar effect baking your loaf in a traditional cast iron Dutch oven, but the cast iron bread oven is specially designed for baking bread, with a shallow lower pan and a taller lid. That heavy lid helps to trap steam inside the bread oven, which produces a better loaf.
Here’s more information about the Aldi cast iron bread oven.
What We Know:
The Crofton Cast Iron Bread Oven (Product Code: 709562) is an Aldi Find, which means it’s only in stores for a short time. Each store receives one shipment, and after that sells out, it’s gone unless Aldi decides to bring it back at some later point. Aldi does not offer online ordering for products not currently in stock at your local store.
This bread oven cost $24.99 at the time of publication. Obviously, that’s a lot less than the $300 you might pay on Le Creuset’s website. Le Creuset bread ovens go for about $300 on Amazon as well, and while I did find some other brands that went for less, you’ll still pay more than $100 for other cast iron bread ovens.
Here’s more information about the Aldi cast iron bread oven:
- Available in Blue Gradient or White
- Makes baking bread at home easy
- Interior diameter: 9″
- Features long-lasting porcelain enamel interior and exterior
- Oven safe up to 482 °F
- Bread recipe included
- Comes with a two-year warranty
- Suitable for all cooktops, including induction
What We Don’t Know:
We haven’t yet tried this cast iron bread oven, so we don’t know how well it works or how well it holds up to use. We also don’t know who provides warranty service for this product. And most importantly, we don’t know how closely this compares to a name-brand Le Creuset bread oven. We write open threads so readers can discuss Aldi products.
Did you purchase the Crofton Cast Iron Bread Oven? Tell us what you think of it in the comments below.
I hope other people have had good luck with this one. Can’t wait to hear from them!
DCS, oven is not high enough for it to have a pan like this with the knob on the top of the lid… Does it come off?
I suspect the knob is probably fastened to the lid by a metal screw. That was the case with the original knob on my Lodge 6qt. Dutch oven. (That wasn’t oven-safe at temps over 400F, so I replaced it with a metal drawer knob — which took the same size screw – from my local hardware store.) So you could probably unscrew the knob, then cover the resulting hole in the lid with aluminum foil.
Correct. I just purchased one today and can confirm the knob is screwed on the lid. I bake sourdough loaves 2x week—usually in my All Clad Dutch oven. For $25, I’m anxious to try this one!
Can you adjust the oven shelving, I am so sorry I can’t remember the proper names of the removable things that items sit on in the oven.
Oven rack
If one bakes a lot of bread, or would like to bake a lot of bread, certainly $24.99 is a far more reasonable price for experimenting with a bread oven than 10 times that much for the Le Creuset version would be! I already own 3 Dutch ovens in various sizes, though, plus a bread machine, so I’d have to do a major purge of my kitchen’s pots & pans storage to find room to store something like this. (If it could multi-task for things besides bread-baking, it might be worth considering, though, especially at that $24.99 price point.)
i would be willing to try this
When will they make this available?
To answer the availability question, my local stores will have them on September 20th. I really don’t know when other cities or states will have them.
When it shows up in stores depends on whether your store sets new specials out on Sundays or Wednesdays. So for some parts of the U.S., this arrives in stores today, Sunday, September 17. For other regions, this will arrive in stores on Wednesday, September 20th.
Here’s more information: https://www.aldireviewer.com/do-aldi-ads-take-effect-on-sunday-or-wednesday/
My flyer said this Wednesday
Could multi-task tagine pot.
Good point!
I’m trying to figure out the popularity of making bread that is round/oval. I like bread that fits in my toaster. I know this is cast iron, so why is the interior also enamel? Doesn’t that negate some of the positive aspects of baking in cast iron?
Hi Pat. These are for making rustic crusty breads. I use my Dutch oven, but will go get one of these as soon as I get off work. Google “No Knead Harvest Bread”. The recipe will fit perfectly in this baker.
Thanks Bisa. I just googled, and several recipes came up. Is there a specific one that you recommend?
I have made just a plain crusty no knead bread. Will try the harvest bread this weekend. I’m excited. Lol
The recipe that comes with the Bread Oven, “Garlic Herb Bread” states to use hot water, flour, yeast, etc…..any baker knows that you cannot use HOT water with yeast.
Hopefully a beginner won’t blame the Bread oven for their recipe not turning out very well because the yeast was killed by hot water.
Thank you for saying this. I just got one of these ovens, and am researching what recipes I can use to make bread in this. I also want to make bread without yeast.
If you look on Pinterest you can find many no knead bread recipes that will work.
Good luck
Bought this today ..I took out one of my oven racks and lowered the other a bit and it fits well..I’m going to try it out Saturday.. I’m looking forward to warm pumpernickel bread to go with my German schnitzel and kraut dinner!!
Good luck! Please let us know how it turns out!
I went to the local Aldi store when I got off yesterday. I was so disappointed…they were sold out! Hope your bread turns out good.
Purchased mine yesterday, I got the1st one, they were gone in under 5 minutes.
Can’t wait to try. I bake a lot of bread during
Soup season.