Testing - Teurgoule (Rice pudding from Normandy)

I love these kinds of recipes, because the history and method of preparation are intertwined. There are several slow-cook recipes that come from a time when each village had a communal oven where each household would bring their bread for the day to be baked. Once the bread was baked, the oven was still hot so, instead of wasting all that energy and making the most of the fuel used to heat it, people would put in slow-cooking dishes, seal up the oven and come back at the end of the day. This is one such recipe. Crazy easy, too. Now the trick is to get it just right.
This is a very slow cooking recipe - 4-7 hours. How, in the name of all that is reasonable, is it possible that such a recipe, traditional to boot, takes so long? It turns out to be fascinating and absolutely reasonable. Well, that is, if you cook with a wood-fired bread oven. To use as much of the energy created from the wood fire, after baking the bread, the still-hot oven was loaded with other dishes and sealed up, the original slow-cooker for, as the temperature very slowly decreased, the food would cook. This rice pudding is such a recipe, where today, we have to burn energy continuously in our modern ranges to get the same effect.

One of the effects of baking over such a long period of time is that a dark crust of dehydrated milk will form on the surface of the dish. Trust me, it does not taste good, but it`s by no means dangerous for you to try some for yourself to see - goodness knows that, because of all the warnings I got, I absolutely had to try a bit, and was able to confirm that everybody who tried it before me and warned me not to eat it, were absolutely correct. HOWEVER, the dessert inside had reduced into a sweet, unctuous pudding, the rice having completely melted into the sweetened milk.

I first saw this in Anne Willian's Look&Cook French Country Cooking book, where the recipe instructs one to reach under the crust with a spoon to stir every half hour. Please do not do this. Since, traditionally, this was sealed in a hot woodfired bread oven for several hours, there was no way to unseal the oven and loose all that heat every half hour just to stir. And it is really hard to do without disturbing the crust AND give it a good stir. It's one or the other. I'm still working out the ratios, but the tiny amount of rice, which I distrusted until I tried it, is absolutely essential. The milk reduces while cooking, and too much rice would create a dry, sweet rice, possibly burnt. Although I haven't tried, I also suspect that using a long grain rice like Basmati would not create as pleasing an effect, either (although I will likely try it, just to see!).

All of this blah-blah for a relatively simple recipe:

1/3 cup round rice
5 cups whole milk (or cream?)
1/3 cup sugar (or 1/4 cup?)
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1. In an oven-proof bowl, mix in together the rice, sugar, cinnamon and salt. Make sure the bowl is bigger than the volume of the ingredients to make sure there is no boiling over.
2. Pour in the milk (no need to mix).
3. Place in the oven and turn on at a temperature of 300F.
4. Bake for 4 hours (I haven't tried longer. I suspect I'd have to reduce the temperature if I did).