Steam

[cjt]

Building myself a oven has now led me to sourdough baked some last week very tasty. I mist my oven with about 25 shots from a hand sprayer just before closing the door what i would like to do is put in a empty roasting pan then add boiling water just before closing the door, does anyone know if this would cause damage to my firebricks? I am worried it would crack them im getting reasonably good crusts at the moment and would rather stick with them the way they are rather than damage my oven

[texassourdough]

Re: Steam

The amount of water you "need" is a function of the size of the oven and how much dough you put in the oven. As a reference point - in my one meter oven I get great crust with about 12 pounds of dough. Below ten pounds and my crust definitely suffers.

Fire bricks shouldn't be affected by a roasting pan with some water in it. It is NOT conventional in WFOs where the humidity traditionally comes from the dough and I am not confident it will work as well as you want as it may overly depress the oven temp and extend the "reheating" of the oven from the refractory - particularly . But it should work. It should probably not have more than a cup of water - maybe a half cup and I would suggest it be boiling. (You probably aren't spraying a half cup into the oven!)

I get better crust when I load the oven with bread. Spraying does not yield the same result.

Good Luck!
Jay

[cjt]

Re: Steam

Thanks Jay, with hindsight i think my crusts are ok i also hang a wet cloth over the door. Bit of a disaster this weekend im afraid i made 10.5 kgs of dough again to bake 12 loaves i was using some new baskets to prove them in and they all stuck wouldnt come out onto the peel so i had to shape them and let them reprove !! i had already made some french bread dough to go in the oven after the sourdough so i put that in 1st turned out great, but as for the sourdough i found myself putting it in the oven too early as i was losing temp so it was short of proving and also the crust didn't caramelize properly. My dough seemed too wet that is why it stuck 65%hydration so i am either going to reduce hydration or knead it a while longer next time. Its all a learning curve i guess
Cheers Chris

[cjt]

Re: Steam


This is my 1 st attempt

[texassourdough]

Re: Steam

Hi Chris!

Rereading my message I should have said that with 12 pounds of dough I only need minimal steaming (I do a little but not much - 5 or six puffs with a sprayer. When I have tried to do 4 to 5 pounds no amount of spraying was enough! I am willing to guess that low humidity and having the oven temp rise back too fast are both contributing to the mediocre crust. I have grown to believe that the oven temp profile from loading to finish is an important part of the quality of great WFO bread. I could be wrong??? But???I may be right!!!

The more loaves you make the more opportunities for things to go wrong! And the process to be challenging. The bread looks pretty good. Perhaps a bit "rustic" but...that is part of the look I like (though mroe rustic for pizza than for bread!)

Hang in there!
Jay

[LeeRain]

Re: Steam

Fire bricks shouldn't be affected by a roasting pan with some water in it. It is NOT conventional in WFOs where the humidity traditionally comes from the dough and I am not confident it will work as well as you want as it may overly depress the oven temp and extend the "reheating" of the oven from the refractory - particularly
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