Scheduling your time for bread baking.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Thanks for the tips Chriss.
Do you think that burning 3 hours, without burning the oven the night before, will have the same result, as about saturating the oven.

I use pine or spruce(i'm having a hard time to get clear what tree it is) and the burn really quick and i need to be there every 15 minutes for reloading 2 logs at a time because i don't like the heavy black smoke they produce.
They produce very little coals that they burned veeery quick!

[SCChris]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Thanks for the tips Chriss.
Do you think that burning 3 hours, without burning the oven the night before, will have the same result, as about saturating the oven.

I use pine or spruce(i'm having a hard time to get clear what tree it is) and the burn really quick and i need to be there every 15 minutes for reloading 2 logs at a time because i don't like the heavy black smoke they produce.
They produce very little coals that they burned veeery quick!

I'm a fan of cooking the night before a bread bake. This has the advantage of bringing the oven temp up well past where you need it to be with hours to spare to adjust if needed. This gives you the advantage of time. Time to let the oven temperatures even out and the time to provide you with enough information to be able to know when the oven will reach the temperature you need it to be during this cooling cycle. If you can push your oven temperatures past your cooking temperature target, still have time for the oven temperatures to even out and glide to where you need them to be, then 3 hours of burning is fine..

As for firewood, a hardwood will provide more heat than the woods your using, but I don't know that you have any access to these.

Chris

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Does anyone light up lets say at 21:00-00:00, leave the coals in to saturate and bake at 09:00 without any new fire?
If this is possible it will be a big time saver.

[Polo]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Does anyone light up lets say at 21:00-00:00, leave the coals in to saturate and bake at 09:00 without any new fire?
If this is possible it will be a big time saver.

My oven is high mass, but I usually fire it for 5 hours the night before. Right before I go to bed, I throw a few logs in and put some bricks in front of the door to allow it to burn slowly during the night. By morning the oven is usually 50 to 60 F over my target baking temperature and saturated adequately to bake multiple batches.

I see no reason the same schedule wouldn't work for you, but you probably won't need 5 hours at the start.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

My oven is high mass, but I usually fire it for 5 hours the night before. Right before I go to bed, I throw a few logs in and put some bricks in front of the door to allow it to burn slowly during the night. By morning the oven is usually 50 to 60 F over my target baking temperature and saturated adequately to bake multiple batches.
I see no reason the same schedule wouldn't work for you, but you probably won't need 5 hours at the start.

I have a draft door that fits exactly on the door lip, that mean that it leaves a 10 cm x 30 cm gap at the height of the hearth and closes the upper arch.
If i leave it this way will i loose a lot of heat?
I guess i will have to test is.
How big is your oven?
Mine is a 90 Cm diameter and 10cm thick.

[Polo]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

I have a draft door that fits exactly on the door lip, that mean that it leaves a 10 cm x 30 cm gap at the height of the hearth and closes the upper arch.
If i leave it this way will i loose a lot of heat?
I guess i will have to test is.
How big is your oven?
Mine is a 90 Cm diameter and 10cm thick.

My oven is a high mass Barrel Vault (the dreaded Alan Scott design). The working hearth dimensions are 81 cm X 96 cm. The thickness, with added mass included, is 18 cm.

Putting the bricks in front of my door has the effect throttling the fire down with out letting it go out. By morning there are only red coals are left. I spread them out, let them die, and sweep and mop my hearth. This while my bread dough (formed in bannetons) is warming up to room temperature.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

My oven is a high mass Barrel Vault (the dreaded Alan Scott design).
Putting the bricks in front of my door has the effect throttling the fire down with out letting it go out. By morning there are only red coals are left. I spread them out, let them die, and sweep and mop my hearth. This while my bread dough (formed in bannetons) is warming up to room temperature.

The actual equalizing of your oven is this the time it takes for the bread dough to rise I guess...
After how long did you put your bread in after removing your coals?

[Polo]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

The actual equalizing of your oven is this the time it takes for the bread dough to rise I guess...
After how long did you put your bread in after removing your coals?

My oven is equipped with thermocouples. The dough goes in when the oven equalizes to about 545 F. Usually about 1 1/2 hours or so after removing the coals and mopping the hearth.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

My oven is equipped with thermocouples. The dough goes in when the oven equalizes to about 545 F. Usually about 1 1/2 hours or so after removing the coals and mopping the hearth.

i realy regret of not putting thermocouples on my oven.
I guess i'll have to test ...and test...and test!

[Polo]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

i realy regret of not putting thermocouples on my oven.
I guess i'll have to test ...and test...and test!

Thermocouples are neat to have, but not really absolutely necessary. You can get a good temperature reading with your IR gun, you just can't tell if you have the oven saturated.
I guarantee that if you fire your oven for three hours before you go to bed, stoke it with wood and block the door overnight (to slow the fire), when you get up your oven will be saturated. Then all you have to do is keep checking surface temperatures with you IR gun until you get back down to baking temperatures.

It is definitely trial and error. I've probably baked over 500 loaves of bread so far this year. That is how you will learn.

Trust me, your neighbors will even love your mistakes.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Next time I will try to fire the night before for two hours and see the temp in the morning.

[vtsteve]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

I have a 42" oven, with a 4.5" thick floor. I fire the day before (ideally, for pizza ) and put the door on after I bank the coals. I always have a good pile of coals when I put the door on -- but no live flame, because it soots up the oven. The next morning, it's soaked and usually in the mid-500's; when I open the door, the coals come back to life.

I like to do three loads of bread, starting at ~590 on the floor, so I add fresh wood *behind* the live coals, and just let it ignite naturally -- a front-to-back version of the top-down fire. I use a draft door, so the hot air off the coals is usually enough to light the wood, but I'll light a twist of newspaper and toss it in if I need to. I want to see a temperature in the upper 600's by the time I'm done shaping.

About an hour before the first batch of dough is ready, I open the door part-way to start bringing the surface temperature down. I want the surface around 590 for the first load, but hotter brick behind to help the temperature recover for the later loads. The first load takes 12-14 minutes of door-closed bake time (I rotate the loaves nearest the door after 6-8 minutes), and the last load takes around 18 minutes.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

I have a 42" oven, with a 4.5" thick floor. I fire the day before (ideally, for pizza ) and put the door on after I bank the coals. I always have a good pile of coals when I put the door on -- but no live flame, because it soots up the oven. The next morning, it's soaked and usually in the mid-500's; when I open the door, the coals come back to life.

I like to do three loads of bread, starting at ~590 on the floor, so I add fresh wood *behind* the live coals, and just let it ignite naturally -- a front-to-back version of the top-down fire. I use a draft door, so the hot air off the coals is usually enough to light the wood, but I'll light a twist of newspaper and toss it in if I need to. I want to see a temperature in the upper 600's by the time I'm done shaping.

About an hour before the first batch of dough is ready, I open the door part-way to start bringing the surface temperature down. I want the surface around 590 for the first load, but hotter brick behind to help the temperature recover for the later loads. The first load takes 12-14 minutes of door-closed bake time (I rotate the loaves nearest the door after 6-8 minutes), and the last load takes around 18 minutes.

Sorry for the long response time.
When i put my door on after an hour or so all my coals are dead?
Do i have to leave it a bit open?
I guess my door shuts really airtight...
I think i put to much effort on making an airtight door, i think i will make another one with only a steel face.

[vtsteve]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Are you still spreading the coals before you put the door on? When I close up the oven the night before, it's already hot; I'm just trying to keep a few live coals to make it easier to refire the next day. I make a deep pile against the wall of the oven, probably 2-3 liters of coals, and cover them with ashes to slow the burn rate. When I open up the next day, the surface of the pile is dark, but if I poke into the middle there are a some that are still glowing. When I expose them to the air, they take off, and the remaining (dark) coals are soon glowing too.

I'm burning hardwood (mostly ash), which produces long-lived coals. I just re-read the thread and you were using very fast-burning softwood, so you're probably not going to have coals that can make it overnight. If your oven is still hot, though, the new fuel should flame up pretty quickly.

How well insulated is your oven? With my crude door on, I lose about 60 degrees (F) per day, so I can burn the day before and retain the heat while it soaks. If you have insulation issues, it won't work so well for you.

[dimitrisbizakis]

Re: Scheduling your time for bread baking.

Are you still spreading the coals before you put the door on? When I close up the oven the night before, it's already hot; I'm just trying to keep a few live coals to make it easier to refire the next day. I make a deep pile against the wall of the oven, probably 2-3 liters of coals, and cover them with ashes to slow the burn rate. When I open up the next day, the surface of the pile is dark, but if I poke into the middle there are a some that are still glowing. When I expose them to the air, they take off, and the remaining (dark) coals are soon glowing too.

I'm burning hardwood (mostly ash), which produces long-lived coals. I just re-read the thread and you were using very fast-burning softwood, so you're probably not going to have coals that can make it overnight. If your oven is still hot, though, the new fuel should flame up pretty quickly.

How well insulated is your oven? With my crude door on, I lose about 60 degrees (F) per day, so I can burn the day before and retain the heat while it soaks. If you have insulation issues, it won't work so well for you.

I spread the coals, i wait for half an hour for the floor to absorb as much as heat as it can and after i close the door.
I'm done with the spruce now, i use it only as a firestarter.
I burn oak now.
i have 10 cm of ceramic blanket to the dome and 30 cm of perlcrete on the floor.
60F a 24h????Wow...that is really good, isn't the heat loss rate related to the temp?I mean the higher the temp the faster the heat loss.