Dutch oven v steam oven - quite a difference
Hello,
I thought I'd post my latest batch because it brings up something interesting...
These two loaves are both from the same batch. Both strengthened in the same way. Both proved for the same amount of time. Both preshaped and shaped exactly the same. Both chilled before baking.
I baked both in the same oven at the same time. However one I baked inside my casserole dish, the other just next to the casserole dish sitting on the same baker's stone.
What a difference.
As some of you will know I've been on a quest for a loaf with good ears for quite some time. You have given me a load of advice on strengthening the dough, scoring, proving, hydration etc etc. But the loaf on the right is what I always get back. Perfectly nice to eat, but looking a bit unimpressive if truth be told.
So I think this experiment proves one thing. I'm getting the prep right, but my oven doesn't really deliver on steam like I was hoping.
I would love to know if you concur or if you still think there might be a problem that I am missing eg I'm wondering if I have my oven much too high for the loaf that's not in the dutch oven. Does this make it go hard too quick? Also, what do you all do when you have two loaves to bake? I can't fit two casseroles in the oven! But I want the result the casserole brings.
Any help gratefully received.
You may need to explore different methods to steam your oven. There is plenty of advice within the pages of this forum.
I only bake on a baking stone. This picture is two 750-gram sourdough batards that I bake a least once a week. Miele with moisture plus. Pre-steam 5 minutes before loading and then steam first 15 minutes of the bake. 238C fist 15 minutes and then lowered to 215C until baked. You may want to review the post you made earlier this year. Cheers
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thank you for your thoughts Gav.
It's interesting that you pre steam the oven. That's certainly something I should try. I have a full steam AEG oven as well as the one I used for this batch but I tend not to bake bread in it because it only goes up to 230.
I wonder if I give it blast on normal convection to heat the stone right up, then swap to full steam, put the loaf in and switch back to convection with moisture (the oven allows three moisture settings as well as full steam but I have always got similar results to what you see on the right.
Preparing the oven full steam seems like a good plan. I guess the oven might lose a little heat as it steams because it only does full steam up to 99 degrees but if I've heated it up fully before and the stone has retained its heat, this could be a plan.
Thanks for the idea. I'll report back!
I don't favor presteaming because the steam could billow out into your face or over your arms as you insert the bread. Of course, that effect depends on your oven but with my setup - baking steel with a steam tray under it - I once generated the steam before placing the bread in and got a cloud of steam in my face when I inserted the bread. I jerked away quickly enough and didn't get burned but my glasses got misted over and I couldn't see.
So please try it with caution, if try it you must!
OTOH, if it takes some time for a steam oven to make steam, then maybe the surface is just getting cooked too much before the steam becomes effective.
Oh for sure, absolute caution is needed with the steam.
I guess it's about getting that point where you won't get burned but also you won't lose all the steam. Tricky but I'm going to give it a go.
In my oven, a loaf expands just about as much as it is going to in the first 4 or 5 minutes. That's when you want steam and a relatively low temperature. I generate steam by pouring water into the steam tray within probably 10 - 20 seconds after I load the loaves (no need to rush, though). The baking stone/steel serves to transmit a lot of heat into the bulk of the dough while the upper surface is still soft and expanding.
I find that two layers of baking stone work better than one, and a baking steel works better than either**.
** If you decide to get a steel, I suggest the one sold by King Arthur. It has a good sized slot for a handle. These things are very heavy so you want a good handle, and many of them don't have any, or only a small one.
Wow, that's about the most expanded loaf I've ever seen! I love side-by-side experiments like this. It does look like the difference is in the steaming - I'm assuming that your casserole is covered. Otherwise I'm somewhat at a loss to explain such a difference.
Home ovens tend not to keep steam contained very long. That's the case with mine. I used to boil the water I poured in to make steam, but then I found that cool tap water gave the same results (not as dramatic an expansion as yours). I also have noticed that my steam pan, which is below my baking sheet, does not recover its temperature for a long time after making the steam. That probably keeps the baking steel cooler than it would otherwise be.
My gauge for deciding whether the oven temperature is too high is whether the top, bottom, and interior all are baked enough at the same time. Too hot, and the upper crust gets much browner than the bottom; too low, and the bottom may stay pale or the crumb may get undercooked.
I think maybe your best bet would be to bake the two loaves one after the other, using the casserole. You could keep the second loaf chilled until the first one was nearly baked.
TomP
Ben, what kind of oven do you have, and what setting were you using ( bottom element bake element or convection)
Hi Barry, my oven is a Siemens which has three settings for moisture, 1 being the lowest, 3 being the highest. I go for setting three on a convection setting of about 250 degrees. I turn the moisture down to 1 after 10 mins and the temp down to 200. Same results every time. A bit of spring but not much, and the score has sealed up. I scored the dutch oven one exactly the same as the other one so I can discount scoring as the problem.
I haven't used a convection oven, but the moving air would tend to dry out the surfaces being cooked. How ironic if the drying effect were overpowering the steam effect! If you can make steam without having the convection on, try that and see how it goes.
It also strikes me that 250 C is a very high temperature for the early part of a bake. Even for a smallish (1 lb/.5kg) loaf I don't bake hotter than 430 deg F/220C, or 410F/210C for a 1kg loaf, and convection, as I understand it, will transfer heat even more effectively than no convection. A covered pot would cool down when the cold loaf is put in, and take some time to come back to temperature. As it did so, the dough would be exposed to a humid but cooler temperature for a time. I'm not sure how large an effect this is but it would certainly be more favorable for expansion than being exposed directly to that very hot oven air stream.
I do usually preheat my oven to 450F or even 500F, but that's only to make sure the baking steel will stay very hot after I create steam by a steam pan beneath the steel. I turn the temperature setting down as soon as I put the loaves in.
A friend has experimented with turning *off* his preheated oven when he puts the loaves in, and only turning it back on after the steam has done its work. He says the results are often better (in terms of crust and expansion) than when he leaves the heat on the whole time.
TomP
Very interesting Tom. I'm going to try a much cooler bake and see if that gives the dough time to expand.
I once put a loaf into a *cold* dutch oven and put that into my preheated kitchen oven. I still got good expansion and crust color. Not perhaps as much as for a preheated DO but acceptable. So don't fear cooler initial temperatures.
TomP
I found some pictures of the cold-dutch-oven loaf, back from 2018. You can see the loaf came out pretty well.
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cold_DO-crumb.jpg
Cold pot allows us to properly proof, allowing for fluffier texture. The oven spring won't be as dramatic compared to banneton proof, but since it's proofed properly, it won't be chewy or rubbery compared to hot pot method, IF proofed in the pot. Thin pot is better for cold pot method, since it heats up faster
Thank you for your thoughts Tom.
Yes I've tried all sorts with steam in the past but nothing satisfactory. I think you're right about using the dutch oven twice. It's just a shame that I have two ovens with moisture settings but nothing has ever come out like the dutch oven example. It makes me think you really do need quite a bit of steam rather than just moisture if you want your loaves to spring so beautifully as mine has int he dutch oven.
I have tried brushing the loaf with water before baking without steam, and the results didn't compare with what I get by steaming. And my steam system is not very effective - I get lots of steam but the loaf is somewhat shielded from it by the baking steel, and the oven vents the steam out fairly quickly (a matter of minutes). Even so, it produces a real improvement in the crust compared to no steam.
TomP
I get the same kind of results you get when I bake without the dutch oven, so I routinely use the DO. I also retard my loaves in the refrigerator overnight for baking the next morning. I have a big enough oven for 2 Lodge 6qt cast iron DOs, but I usually bake 3 or more loaves, so I stagger the bakes. My solution is to also stagger the loaves out of the refrigerator. Because I bake for about 28 minutes, and wait 15 minutes between bakes with at least one DO back in the oven to reheat between bakes, I pull the last loaf/loaves from the refrigerator at least 45 minutes after I pull the loaves that bake first. I can only fit about 4 bannetons into my refrigerator so two bakes is what it takes me.
It works for me. Perhaps it will work for you too, to bake both loaves in the DO one at a time.
Best of luck
OldWoodenSpoon
Some people use a Challenger pan to bake in relays. After half the bake time they remove the first loaf and put it next to the Challenger. They put the second loaf in the Challenger. When the first one is done they can take it out and do the same dance if they have more to bake.
I am not familiar with your particular oven, but have used a number of residential combination ovens ( steam and convection ) and the two drawbacks are that in most, the convection fan runs, even when on 100% steam. Second, even when you turn the oven off, the fan runs until the oven has cooled down a bit, so you always have the problem of the air moving above the loaf and in essence, drying it out. I currently have a Miele, and that produces pretty good results, so I don't see the vast difference between a DO and the Miele. Another option for you may be the Fourneau, it is like a DO, but you leave the main part in the oven the whole time, the door is on the front and just comes off.
Thanks Barry, I wonder if I'll see a difference if I change from convection mode to standard top and bottom heat mode.
I wonder if that might stop the moisture circulating and drying.
Couple of things I'm going to try then. 1) lower the heat to start the bake. 2) switch to conventional oven mode to see if that keeps the moisture from drying off.
If they don't work, at least this dutch oven method is producing beautiful loaves so I'm stoked about that anyway!
Thank you for your input on this Barry, much appreciated
Ben, yes, definitely conventional mode will work better. You didn't say if it was gas or electric. If gas, it is pretty well vented so any moisture in the oven gets out quickly. If electric, there is a possibility that you can add steam using sylvia's towel method. https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20162/oven-steaming-my-new-favorite-way
Even with a electric oven - like mine - that vents steam quickly, the steam definitely improves the bake. Just produce a big blast of it.