Encouraging oven spring at home

[jgarner53]

What would you suggest is the best way to achieve maximum oven spring in a home (gas) oven? My artisan loaves generally taste good and have a good, well-developed crumb, but I'm really struggling with how to get a good spring out of them. Lately I 've been spraying them with water before putting them in the oven, and then every couple of minutes for the first 8 minutes or so of baking time (this is on a boule).

[James MacGuire]

I haven't done much baking in home ovens, and feel that you might get a better answer from Susan Miller who runs the baking classes at King Arthur.

That said, I have tried the following with okay results:

------- Place an oven stone on the top shlf of the oven in such a way that the bread will be baking midway between the top and bottom of the oven. Plac a thick cast iron frying pan on the shelf underneath, and preheat both at the same time as the oven itself.

------- When the loaves are ready to bake, slide them onto the stone and immediately pour 3 or so ounces of boiling water into the frying pan and close the oven as quickly as possible so that the newly created steam doesn't escape. The leave the oven door shut for at least 10 or 15 minutes for the same reason.

The idea is that a reasonable amount of boiling water will vaporise on contact with the huge mass of hot metal ( cold water won't vaporise as easily, and too much water will drown things and the effect won't be the same.

Alas, I have never achieved the same results as with a real hearth style baker's oven.

Whatever you do, keep baking!

[albert_crowley]

I have noticed that my particular oven seems to vent out the steam pretty quickly so what I do is this:

Just before putting the loaves in the oven I pour a few cups of simmering water into a 13x9 glass dish and put that on the bottom rack of the oven. The loaves go on the middle rack above the water. When I want to remove the steam, I just pull the glass dish out and finish baking.

I'm not an expert, but the bread I make at home using this method seem to come out pretty well. The crumb develops very nicely and the spring is pretty good....not as much spring as I get at school with the comercial ovens, but better than nothing!

-Al

[pss999]

I get near-commercial quality deck-oven spring (and bottom crust formation) by using a kiln shelf as a baking stone. Most "baking" or "pizza" stones sold for home use are much too light and don't hold enough heat. A 1/2-inch thick kiln shelf (used for firing pottery) holds a massive amount of heat for incredible spring. Note: it can be pretty heavy -- so be careful and make sure your oven rack is strong enough. I believe this material (silicon carbide) is actually used in commercial deck ovens sometimes. But don't go thicker than 1/2-inch -- I tried one, and it was too heavy (almost breaking the racks in my oven) and it held too much heat (!), burning the bottom of the bread before it was done. I got one from my dad (a ceramic artist), but you should be able to buy one from a pottery supply house such as SIAL here in Montreal. For steam, use a cast iron pan, preheated with the stone, then pour in enough boiling water when you load your bread so that it evaporates in about 10-15 minutes and is then dry (experiment based on your oven, since home ovens vent at greatly varying rates). To increase steam, you can fill the cast iron pan with scrap metal which increases heat retention and surface area (I've heard that large ball-bearings work too). But nothing beats a kiln shelf for thermal mass! Oh, I also got scraps of granite from a quarry in the Eastern Townships (they have massive scrap piles they'll be happy to give you and some can be very beautiful!) and it works really well too and looks really cool, but same thing, you need to experiment with the right thickness and finding the right size for your oven can be a pain, but if you're really nice and tell them you're a crazy bread baker, the quarry guys will sometimes cut the scrap piece for you.

Paul

[pss999]

Oh, I should mention that I also tried the "unglazed quarry tiles" that everyone always seems to recommend. The quarry tiles were a pain and they were constantly cracking and moving around when I loaded the bread, and spring wasn't great (they were too thin). Switching to the kiln shelf gave immediate and noticeable results, confirming that thermal mass/transfer really is an important aspect of a deck or brick oven. Side and top radiation (for a nice top crust) will still be lacking, but raising up the shelf can help. Books often say to put the rack low (probably because bread recipes commonly call for sugar and honey leading to premature browning), and my top crust never came out right until I raised the rack as high as I could (I did this after using commercial deck ovens and measuring the deck-to-roof height which is usually quite low!) Like with steam, experiment with height depending on your oven and dough compositions and loaf sizes...

Paul

[beccaboo]

I'd heard in the bread-baking news group that this was a better-than-average baking stone, so when I had to get a new stone to go with my new oven I got one and I like it really well. It's thick and retains the heat well.