"Blowouts" in wood oven, not in dutch oven
Hello - Long time lurker, first time poster...
I normally cook my loaves in my kitchen oven, inside of a dutch oven at 450-475.
I've only tried doing them in the wood oven a few times, and a couple of those times I've produced some strange outcomes, as you'll see in the photos. Is it possible the uneven temperature inside my wood oven causes this?
I brought the oven to 550, let the coals burn out spread on the oven floor, and then cleaned them out about 30 minutes before bake. I think (wish I could remember for sure) that the blowouts happened on the back side of both loaves, where the temp may have been hotter since the fire was back there for a couple hours earlier.
Yesterday's dutch oven bake:
Today's WFO bake
Oven spring was still decent.
Comments on some of the other variables that came to mind, besides the temperature described earlier:
1) Shaping process. If anything I felt like my technique was more on point today.
2) Slashes. These were the same in both cases. One loaf with a square, and the other with three lines.
3) The load is different. For dutch oven the loaves get flipped over onto parchment paper that gets placed into the dutch oven. The WFO had me flipping the loaves onto a floured peel and sliding them in. Maybe something about that weakens once side even more than the slashes, so this becomes the new expansion place?
4) Proof. Today my loaves were proofing a lot slower since the temp dropped a bit. I gave them the time they needed though, mostly once they were shaped.
Thanks for reading!
WFOs are not airtight and are quite a bit bigger relative to the bread load than a dutch oven, so steam usually has to be added to achieve similar results. A full load of bread in the oven can help too, as the dough gives off moisture which is why the DO results are good. There aren’t a lot of great ways to add steam to a WFO. I think spraying water is useless, but you could put a steam pan with boiling water in it somewhere inside and that might help. Poilane in Paris has little bowls of water in their ovens, but those are white ovens meaning the firing chamber is below the cooking chamber hence they are actively heating while the bread is cooking.
Thank you - I knew the lack of steam meant the crusts weren't as shiny and crackly. I didn't realize it could have an impact on the shape the loaf took during oven spring. Would the idea be that the crust dries out unevenly, so it'll expand in unpredictable ways?
I was going to tinker around with steam methods once I figured out some of the other process differences, but I guess I'll try sooner if it's impacting shape :)
Precisely. The crust dries too quickly and then will break at any weak point to allow expansion- usually around the side or bottom.
What kind of WFO do you have? I used a Pompeii-type oven for a couple years and baked a few thousand loaves in it so I have a bit of experience.
The oven is a Four Grand Mere 700B that the fine folks at Bread Stone Ovens built. I've had it for 7 years, but don't fire it as much as expected (kids will do that to you), and even though it was bought with bread in mind I find myself using it for almost anything but :)
I think you were right Michael - thank you. I put two 8" cast iron skillets full of water in the back of the oven today. The expansion stayed with my slashes -- not as clean as in the dutch oven, but a remarkable improvement in one day. The oven had more time to rest too before the load in, so that may have contributed. In any case, feeling encouraged :)
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In response to the oven itself, this is what we're working with.
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Big improvement. However, it may be you are still putting the bread in too early. I.e still drying out too fast and your crust is a good bit darker than your reference loaves done in a dutch oven. You may benefit from letting the temp come down a little further before you put the bread in.
Have you ever done a temp curve test for your oven so you know what the cooling down profile looks like?
On this note, the thermal mass and conductivity of the materials in your oven will dictate what which temperature you should bake. For example, I might bake in my home oven at 450 (set temp), in my brick oven at 500 (surface temp of floor bricks), 425 in a large gas pizza oven with steel decks, and 460 in a real deck oven with steam and get similar results. How you measure the temp (surface or air temp) and the conductivity of the material are the two most important variables here.
It would be worthwhile to check the floor and dome temps with an infrared thermometer if you haven't done so already.
These are all great suggestions. As silly as it sounds, the batteries are dead in my IR thermometer so I've just been relying on the probe you see on the oven -- which is giving the reading at the center of what I think are 3" walls. I will keep at it, and do IR readings of the floor and dome in each case to see what we might learn. Needed to take a couple days off for the rest of life :)
That last bake you see had a couple new variables introduced (comical, as the whole point was to isolate them in the first place). I over-fired the oven, and the thermometer said the core reached 600deg. It was a warm day out, so with the oven situation I needed to store the shaped loaves in the fridge for about 5 hours. In the end the oven stabilized a lot longer than the day before. Temp was just under 500 at load time, but with cold dough they were taking longer to brown - around 45 minutes, compared to my usual 40 in the dutch oven. In any case, the comment about a hot oven is probably spot-on.
Thanks again for all the discussion - it's a lot of fun tinkering around and the advice is proving to be very helpful. I hopped on my bike early this morning to deliver those loaves to some friends, so the experiments are rewarding for everyone. :)
This example may help.
Another possibility is convection within the oven. You don't mention closing the door opening, which if not closed would lead to a lot of air movement. But even if closed, if there were a hotter area of the floor - because the fire had been located there - there would be uneven convection.
Interesting, I do have a heavy insulated door that seals off the oven. I had it in place, but at a small angle that left maybe a cm opening or so on the bottom - I placed a loaf close to the opening and couldn't tell if the door would touch. It might have created the air movement you mention and exasperated my hypothesis of an uneven floor temp. I'm going to light the fire earlier to leave more time for stabilization after coal cleanup, and make sure the door can be fully sealed the next time. Thank you.
I don't know the particulars of your oven, but if it's big enough you could make an enjoyable day of cooking. I used to have an adobe horno - the beehive-shaped traditional oven of the US southwest. It wasn't very good for bread, but sometimes I would fire it very hot (enough to clean the soot from the dome) and bake several rounds of pizza. Then I would let it cool down some, but still with the fire, and cook several different roasts. I could also roast root vegetables - golden beets work especially well - in a cast iron skillet near the open door. Then I would remove the coals and cook one or two stews. Finally I put a pot of beans to cook overnight in the residual heat.
What a fine collection of wonderful-tasting foods!
TomP
Thanks Tom - I couldn't agree more with you. I typically do the same when making pizza... While waiting for the oven to come to temp, I throw a bunch of pans of vegetables in there - carrots, potatoes, beets, broccoli and cauliflower all come out very good. The next morning a pot of beans. On the flipside, it makes the cooking day such a commitment that I don't do it very often. I'm trying to be less ambitious to get myself using the oven more. These loaves are the only thing going in -- inefficient, but a way to focus and practice a specific technique.
Have a great weekend
A big commitment for sure. And for my large and inefficient horno, a big commitment to keep it in wood.