Easy Steam
Anne Awh
story of oven vent plugging and smoke alarm unplugging. I'm sorry I have
lost these posts so cannot reply with them in this message. (There is
something elusive to me about storage of newsgroup mail. If anyone knows of
an online tutorial...)
I decided not to try the plugging/unplugging techniques out of laziness as
well as fear, but I have now rejected the bottom-rack water tray method. My
bread was coming out of the oven with a sickly yellow rubbery bottom crust
(a bit of an exaggeration), so I improvised some bent-up pie tins to place
on either side of the stone, that is, on the same rack as the stone, one on
the left and one on the right. This gave me all the steam I wanted (using
3/4 cup water) with a nice dark thickish crunchy crackly chewy crust on the
bottom as well as everywhere else. Another bonus was that I didn't need to
spray the loaves themselves before putting them in, although I am now doing
a couple of oven-spritzing sessions during the first few minutes. In the
tray-under-the-stone days, spraying the loaves and spritzing the left the
crust somewhat thin. Now I can put 3/4 cups water in the two trays instead
of the 1/2 cup of before, and I'm not cooling the stone with the steam or
losing steam due to it getting sucked directly into the stone. I believe
the tray was "tenting" the loaf as well. I'm also boiling the water before
placing it in the trays.
The only problem I'm having is that the trays leak right out of the oven,
so I'm looking for options for narrow metal trays to use instead. Any
ideas?
Thanks
--Anne
Ellen Wickberg
----------
In article <ab6von$1dj$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>, "Anne Awh"
merl...@yahoo.com
On Mon, 6 May 2002 15:18:26 -0700, "Anne Awh" <ann...@mindspring.com>
wrote:
Brian Mailman
>
> There is something elusive to me about storage of newsgroup mail. If anyone
> knows of an online tutorial...)
Newsgroup messages aren't mail. Mail is entirely a different transport
system and "protocols" (the way messages are sent) than "News."
There's a newsgroup that is set up to help answer basic questions (as
well as some advanced ones). news.newusers.questions. They are _very_
helpful.
B/
Ryan Zwahr
you crack the door just a little to your oven and spray the steam in
for a few seconds right before loading the bread. Artisan Baking
Across America (Maggie Glaser book) recommends it. Anybody tried it?
-Ryan
merl...@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<otqedug0vnaoq3p0p...@4ax.com>...
Mike Avery
> Anybody tried a pump up garden sprayer - I've heard that works good if
> you crack the door just a little to your oven and spray the steam in
> for a few seconds right before loading the bread. Artisan Baking
> Across America (Maggie Glaser book) recommends it. Anybody tried it?
Yes and no... I took a baking class from a local baker a
while back. He has two hand-pump sprayers hanging on
his oven. One on the left, one on the right. When he
puts bread in, he grabs one and sprays the entire oven
with it. Including the bread. Then he closes the door.
He's happy with the results, but I like more crust than
he usually gets.
My approach is to put a baking pan in the bottom of my
gas oven and just let it stay there. When I put bread
in, I put 1/2 to 1 cup of hot water in the pan. Works
for me, despite the comments about water cooling the
oven.
Mike
Bob.B.
It seems to me there are at least two critical factors in the introduction
of steam into the oven -- heat and humidity. You need them both to get a
sudden surge of expansion in the loaf -- heat to suddenly cause the loaf to
expand before a hardened crust precludes this and humidity to keep the
exterior of the loaf supple so that it CAN expand. Increasing humidity at
the expense of heat such as holding the oven door open while you give a few
feeble squirts from a sprayer seems to me to be counterproductive. Small,
home ovens with little mass do not retain a lot of heat. In an oven with
great mass, e.g., a brick oven, leaving the door open for a few minutes
will not seriously deplete its heat, but in the home oven with a puny pizza
stone the little heat stored is quickly lost.
I've tried any number or routines over the years, and what I've found best
and what seems most logical from a physics standpoint is the use of a heavy
cast iron pan in the bottom of the oven, right on top of the heating
element, well heated along with your oven. This is coupled with the sudden
introduction of about 2/3 cup BOILING water into the hot pan immediately
after you have introduced your loaves. All this is done with minimal
opening of the door, in other words as fast as you can -- so as to retain
heat. Yes, you could throw two cups of boiling water into the pan and have
more humidity, but such an amount would "steal" a lot of heat from the oven.
It takes heat to vaporize water. Remember "oven spring" needs humidity AND
heat. Hand spritzers, introduction of ice cubes, use of thin, tin pans
versus heavy cast iron pans are all inferior approaches to humidity
increase.
Anyway, so it seems to me. Would be interested in other thoughts about the
"physics" of all of this. There is nothing magic about 2/3 cup water. I've
gotten there by trial and error. I'd guess for a typical home oven it's
between 1/2 cup and full cup.
As for recommendations by experts -- and I do consider Maggie Gelzer an
expert who has turned out a really wonderful book -- take them with a grain
of salt. I've gone up more bad alleys with experts' recommendations.
Bob
Ryan Zwahr wrote in message ...
Brian Mailman
> Hand spritzers, introduction of ice cubes, use of thin, tin pans
> versus heavy cast iron pans are all inferior approaches to humidity
> increase.
Heh. As I've written, my 1927 Spark is the equivalent of a
several-hundred-pound cast iron pan.
B/
Darrell Greenwood
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <ab6von$1dj$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>, Anne Awh
<ann...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> (There is
> something elusive to me about storage of newsgroup mail. If anyone knows of
> an online tutorial...)
http://www.google.ca/googlegroups/basics.html
Cheers,
Darrell
--
To reply, substitute .net for .invalid in address, i.e., darrell.usenet1 (at)
telus.net
Darrell Greenwood
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From: Darrell Greenwood <darrell...@telus.invalid>
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Subject: Re: Easy Steam
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In article <ab6von$1dj$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>, Anne Awh
<ann...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> (There is
> something elusive to me about storage of newsgroup mail. If anyone knows of
> an online tutorial...)
http://www.google.com/googlegroups/basics.html
http://www.google.com/googlegroups/help.html
Dick Adams
futile) under some conditions:
<http://www.prettycolors.com/bread_culture/02-05-07.html>
That may be compared with:
<http://www.prettycolors.com/bread_culture/02-04-27.html>
The more recent experiment differed as follows:
No steam or moisture was supplied to the oven, other than whatever
moisture was distilled from the dough.
The dough was a bit sloppier (sorry, cup measure, no ostensibly
accurate hydration percentage).
Baking parchment rather than oiled foil was used, with good
results, for facilitation of handling the dough loaves with the
peel.
But, in both cases, the oven vent was closed and the gas turned
off for the first ten minutes of bake, after the stone had been
preheated to ~500°F. And, in both cases, the dough-loaf surfaces
were quite moist because the rise was done in a very moist
enclosure. In both cases, good browning indicated that
fermentation had not gone to completion, consistent with observed
moderate, as contrasted with extreme, sour taste.
In the more recent experiment the oven cooled to 400°F during the
ten minutes when the gas was off, compared with < 300°F.
previously.
I have no doubt that a professionally steamed oven produces a
thicker and chewier crust than can be obtained in a home oven.
However, trapping innate moisture in the oven, by sealing the
oven, as I have done, may be of value. In general, the cooling of
the oven during whatever procedure is attempted towards increasing
moisture, or "steaming", may do as much good as those attempts to
maintain initial dough-surface elasticity via adding moisture..
My stone, at an initial 500°F., seems sufficient to inflate dough
loaves of the sizes in these experiments for fairly good holey
structure, with or without steam generated by throwing water into
a preheated frying pan contained in the oven or grill beneath it
(at least, when the oven vent is closed as indicated).
There is some other history at:
<http://www.prettycolors.com/bread_culture/experimental2.html>
and
<http://www.prettycolors.com/bread_culture/StoneBaking.html>
The thread-head article, wherein I described the "Easy steaming"
procedure, is at
<http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en>
with message ID
<FBMv8.33991$Rw2.2...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
(The thread was renamed slightly, and the content drifted
considerably. Or, to put it bluntly, the thread got all messed
up.)
--
Dick Adams
<firstname> dot <lastname>at bigfoot dot com
Robert Schonfeld
which boiling water is poured just before loading the loaf. I remove this
setup after baking at 500 degrees for the first ten minutes. This method,
along with my thick unglazed ceramic tiles, produces crust with which I'm
very happy.
Robert