Bread With Jam

Steam power!

Written by

CJ

in


I baked my second loaf using the oven stone this morning, and as I was getting ready to put the dough in the oven, I remembered Dad saying something about “misting the oven.” This is a step I haven’t taken before, and I’ve noticed a couple things.

First, when I’ve made loaves in the dutch oven – which helps retain more humidity around the loaf when you have the lid on for the first 2/3 of the bake – the resulting crust is…well, quite crusty (in a good way).

When I’ve made loaves without the dutch oven, either cooking them on a baking sheet or on the oven stone, the crust is much thinner and softer.

So I thought, perhaps this “misting” step is important for the crusty crust.

I didn’t have a mister, but looking in Peter Reinhart’s “Artisan Breads Every Day,” I found the author suggested one can also use a “steam pan” to add humidity to the oven. He recommends adding hot water to a pre-heated steam pan (below the oven stone – be careful not to spill water on the stone) just before putting the dough in the oven.

Since I was in a hurry, and not reading the directions that carefully (like, how much water?) I put cold water into a baking sheet that just happened to be pre-heated under my stone (lucky break, I often store pans in the oven for lack of cupboard space). It created quite a blast of steam and warped the pan so much I thought I might have a spill. (A little more water and the pan un-warped). Then I closed the door and waited another five minutes or so before putting the dough in (should I have done it right away when there was more steam?)

The bread that finally came out was indeed more crusty – somewhere between the dutch-oven bread and the no-steam/no-dutch-oven bread. Also, I had to let the surface get quite dark before the internal bread temp finally crested 180 with ease – when I put the thermometer in the first time, the dial virtually crawled from 175 to 180.

After cooling, I cut into the first couple inches. Crust aside, the inside looked good. A bit more dense, particularly toward the bottom, but this was a 50/50 whole wheat dough. I’ll add some pictures soon.

Comments

4 responses to “Steam power!”

  1. jam Avatar
    jam

    I've been "misting" the oven, as you have with the pan (only I use a cast iron skittle), after I put the bread into the oven.

    Here are the steps:
    Put the bread in the oven
    Add about 4 ounces of hot water to the pan (being careful not to get blasted by the steam)
    Close the door and wait until the water has evaporated (a couple of minutes)
    Repeat once or twice more

    In theory, this should give the bread more time to rise before the crust solifies.

    My reading indicates most bakers use a process similar to this.

    Reply
  2. randy Avatar
    randy

    I do the same as John except I use a cheap pie pan and it works well. I use 0.006 250 US bucket of H2O for the first steam and follow by one more half way through the cooking.

    Reply
  3. casey Avatar
    casey

    One other remark. This morning, I took my dough out of the fridge this morning at 5:15 and let it sit on the counter (in the bowl) till around 6:15. At that point I took it out and spread it into a rectangle and left it there to proof like that for about 45 minutes. Then I folded it into a loaf shape and finished proofing for another hour or so.

    The reason I did this was because on my last loaf, I took it out of the fridge and folded it into a bun shape right away, then left it to proof. However, I'm concerned that, when folded into a ball like that, it takes a lot longer for the dough on the inside to warm up. Thus, this could lead to uneven proofing, and indeed, I had more air pockets toward the outside (top) of the loaf. So I thought maybe by spreading it out for part of the proof, I'd get a more even temperature and more even proofing. I'm not sure I achieved that completely, but I think it might have helped. Would try to leave it spread out a bit longer if time allowed for it.

    Reply
  4. jam Avatar
    jam

    I've done the same thing, and there is every reason to expect that is a reasonable thing to do.

    Reply

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