I have a Moroccan style tagine, and I usually use it on the stovetop. The recipes or guidelines I have found for baking bread in a tagine usually depend on using it in an oven – something that is problematic for me in my particular oven (because of its height). I'm interested in knowing if there's some way to adapt techniques to make bread (flatbread, biscuits, I'm not too picky) using the tagine on a stovetop.
An answer to this question here suggested looking at dutch oven recipes. Some of them require the use of an oven, like the tagine recipes. Others, the camping versions, seem to require techniques I am not sure would translate to a stovetop tagine – that kind of quick preheating, while fine for thick cast iron, would likely cause temperature shock in the tagine (since it is designed for consistent slow temperatures).
So, on to details. Preheating the tagine should put the camping dutch oven recipes back into play. I'm pretty unsure about leaving it on the stove to preheat while empty, especially since it will take a while (half hour or more) to get hot – having been warned against heating up pots without at least a little liquid in them. Having water or oil in there while it preheats, though, is likely to affect the finished bread since the extra water/oil will coat the bottom. On the other hand, the reasons it is unwise to heat pots empty might not even apply to a tagine, since it is a thck clay dish, kept on very low heat, is supposed to absorb a lot of heat slowly, and is a largely sealed environment anyway – if anyone knows, that would be helpful.
The alternative to preheating the tagine, would be to put the dough in it while still cold, and let the dough be heated up at the same, slow rate. I'm not sure what all of the effects would be – it might create a final rising before it reaches baking temperatures, so I would maybe avoid those recipes where the timing has to be precise… actually, figuring out timing is likely to be difficult for tagine baking anyway, most of the recipes for stews and such are really flexible. I think it's unlikely to burn or something equally dramatic, but it will probably affect the texture, and I'm not sure which kinds of dough might be able to tolerate the technique.
So, in case that was too long and chatty, what I am looking for is any techniques that might be helpful in either baking in a stovetop tagine, like how to preheat the dish, or in adapting the recipes to work with the limitations of the tagine, ie, perhaps a drier dough because less moisture escapes, or because there's a little left from preheating with water in the container.
This isn't urgent, since I do have an oven capable of baking – but I've wanted to bake bread in it since I got the tagine, if I can figure out how. It might have the beneficial side effect of letting me make bread with thinner, softer crust, since mine tends to come out rather crusty.
As per request, here's an example tagine picture, so it's clear what kind of pot I'm talking about. A short article on how to cook in a tagine can be found here, so there's an idea of what kind of adaptations might be useful.
Best Answer
I've cooked bread on the stove many times. My setup was a cast iron pan with a metal trivet inside and a small pot inside that, which is what the bread dough was placed in. I then had an old rice cooker pot inverted over the pan. That essentially created a small stovetop oven. The small pot was on the trivet so the pot didn't get direct heat from the cast iron pan - otherwise, the bread would burn on the bottom. I did this for many years to make one or two servings of bread every morning for breakfast.
You could likely do something similar in your tagine. Figuring out the timing for the bread was trial and error. There's just no other effective way.
As for flat breads, I cook them using my cast iron or carbon steel frying pan. I've tried baking naan, but we don't like the texture of it, so frying is the way to go for us.