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PotaToss
I’ve been doing sourdough for about two months. By about my third loaf, I’d gotten a good handle on fermentation, and I’ve basically just been fighting with my oven for like 7 weeks. It’s bottom-only gas heat, and can’t hold temperature, so it fires very frequently, creating abnormally high convection, drying out my crusts before the inside can get hot, preventing me from getting spring.
I tried straight open baking, throwing a stainless bowl over it, cooking in a big saute pan with lid, various methods of generating steam, playing with my oven rack positions. Everything covered with stainless failed because it was reflecting all of my radiant heat.
I finally got some spring by doing a weird configuration where I had a baking stone on the lower middle rack, a baking steel on the top rack, so that I could get more radiant heat into my loaf before my stupid oven could dry it out with its constant firing, but it had a tendency to channel gas out in the spot closest to the baking steel, so my loaves looked like they had kind of a weird tumor.
It was fun to hypothesize and experiment, but I felt like I’d reached a point where I wasn’t learning anything anymore, so I just caved and bought a Brod & Taylor Baking Shell (boule shape — the batard shape length is like the same as the diameter of the boule, so it seems pointlessly less flexible).
This loaf is the first try with the shell.
The blistering was out of control. Crust was much more crisp, instead of crunchy, because the steam was actually contained.
—
410g King Arthur bread flour
50g King Arthur pumpernickel
330g water
10g salt
100g 1:1 starter
74.5% hydration, approx 0.75 qt starting volume (sorry for quarts)
Mix everything at once until flour is all hydrated.
Rest 15 minutes.
Stretch and fold x3, half hour apart.
Coil folds x2, half hour apart.
Bulk fermented at 71F for around 6 hours, 2/3 rise (1.25 qt).
Preshape, rest 15 minutes. Shape, then cold proofed in 10″ banneton, 40F, until my baking shell was delivered, approx 18 hours.
Preheated until my baking steel on the middle rack was 400F.
Scored, misted sides (intentionally avoided the top).
Baked with shell, threw an ice cube onto the steel under the shell, 450F for 22 minutes.
Removed shell, put an inverted sheet pan on the steel and put the loaf back on top to avoid scorching the bottom. Baked another 20 minutes.
BattledroidE
That’s a pretty one. Nicely fermented and tall.
I remember trying all sorts of hacks to make the oven work like a bakery oven. I got it to work eventually, by having an insane amount of steam and turning my whole kitchen into a sauna. But eventually I got a Dutch oven, and there’s nothing to think about, it just does its thing. That said, baking steel with a big stainless steel bowl on top does the same thing, which worked for small loaves. For regular size, I don’t have a big enough bowl or oven, so DO it is.
7 Comments
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I’ve been doing sourdough for about two months. By about my third loaf, I’d gotten a good handle on fermentation, and I’ve basically just been fighting with my oven for like 7 weeks. It’s bottom-only gas heat, and can’t hold temperature, so it fires very frequently, creating abnormally high convection, drying out my crusts before the inside can get hot, preventing me from getting spring.
I tried straight open baking, throwing a stainless bowl over it, cooking in a big saute pan with lid, various methods of generating steam, playing with my oven rack positions. Everything covered with stainless failed because it was reflecting all of my radiant heat.
I finally got some spring by doing a weird configuration where I had a baking stone on the lower middle rack, a baking steel on the top rack, so that I could get more radiant heat into my loaf before my stupid oven could dry it out with its constant firing, but it had a tendency to channel gas out in the spot closest to the baking steel, so my loaves looked like they had kind of a weird tumor.
It was fun to hypothesize and experiment, but I felt like I’d reached a point where I wasn’t learning anything anymore, so I just caved and bought a Brod & Taylor Baking Shell (boule shape — the batard shape length is like the same as the diameter of the boule, so it seems pointlessly less flexible).
This loaf is the first try with the shell.
The blistering was out of control. Crust was much more crisp, instead of crunchy, because the steam was actually contained.
—
410g King Arthur bread flour
50g King Arthur pumpernickel
330g water
10g salt
100g 1:1 starter
74.5% hydration, approx 0.75 qt starting volume (sorry for quarts)
Mix everything at once until flour is all hydrated.
Rest 15 minutes.
Stretch and fold x3, half hour apart.
Coil folds x2, half hour apart.
Bulk fermented at 71F for around 6 hours, 2/3 rise (1.25 qt).
Preshape, rest 15 minutes. Shape, then cold proofed in 10″ banneton, 40F, until my baking shell was delivered, approx 18 hours.
Preheated until my baking steel on the middle rack was 400F.
Scored, misted sides (intentionally avoided the top).
Baked with shell, threw an ice cube onto the steel under the shell, 450F for 22 minutes.
Removed shell, put an inverted sheet pan on the steel and put the loaf back on top to avoid scorching the bottom. Baked another 20 minutes.
That’s a pretty one. Nicely fermented and tall.
I remember trying all sorts of hacks to make the oven work like a bakery oven. I got it to work eventually, by having an insane amount of steam and turning my whole kitchen into a sauna. But eventually I got a Dutch oven, and there’s nothing to think about, it just does its thing.
That said, baking steel with a big stainless steel bowl on top does the same thing, which worked for small loaves. For regular size, I don’t have a big enough bowl or oven, so DO it is.
It’s good!👍🏻 Maybe perfect!🤩
Took me years to that nice of a loaf! Wow!
Beautiful loaf
Congratulations!🎉🍾🎈