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Bread gets burned when baking with steam

February 15, 2020 - 8:26pm
azjet's picture
azjet

Bread gets burned when baking with steam

I've gotten into sourdough breads in the last few months. So far I've been baking boules in a Dutch oven and they've been coming out fairly well. But you can't bake a batard or a baguette in one of those, so I've started exploring baking with steam, using Maurizio's (from The Perfect Loaf) method.

Yesterday I made a batch of a 20% spelt / 5% rye dough and after the bulk ferment, divided it into 2 portions, one shaped as boule, the other - a batard. After overnight cold retardation, I've fired up the oven to 500F this morning and baked the boule in the Dutch oven (20 mins with lid on at 500F, 25 mins with lid off at 450F). Then I reheated the oven and put the batard on a baking stone and poured the water into the pan with lava rocks. After about 10 minutes I could see the bread spring up, but it also started getting a charred spot on the top. Afraid I was going to get a burnt loaf, I put a small sheet of foil on top, loosely covering it. The rest of the baking schedule was the same as for the Dutch oven.

My oven has a heating coil on the bottom, so I have to use one oven rack just over it to hold the pans with towels and  the lava rocks, and then the second rack is in the middle position to hold the baking stone.

As you can see in the second image below, there few a few charred spots on the batard. Any idea what this might be due to? The top crust looks weird likely due to the aluminum foil cover, but I'm mainly concerned about the charring.

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idaveindy's picture
idaveindy
Feb 16 2020 - 5:44am
  1. Try lowering the temp for baking without a DO.  The DO acts as insulator.   500 F seems too high to bake an uncovered hearth bread.  450 would be more in line with most formulas.    (You didn't say what your batard was baked at, so I'm assuming you meant to imply that you did it at the same temp as the DO bake.)
     
  2. You don't say if your spelt and rye is whole grain or not.  Generally speaking, 500 might still be too high for a DO with non-whole-grains.  You can pre-heat the oven and DO to 500, but then turn it down to 450 when you load in the dough.
     
  3. Did you pre-heat the DO ?  If not, there's another possible factor in the apples-vs-oranges, why the batard charred and not the boule.
     
  4. have you calibrated your oven?  that is, tested it with a store-bought oven thermometer to see if actual oven temperature matches the thermostat setting?   Some ovens run hotter, some cooler, than the setting.  My oven is 20 degrees cooler than the setting.
     
  5. The surface of the two loaves looks very different.  Were they treated/prepared/proofed differently, other than the steaming method?  Did you spray water directly on the batard?
     
  6. How much water did you put in the steam pan?  1 cup (240 ml) should be enough.  I'm thinking the batard might have been over-steamed.

 

azjet's picture
azjet
Feb 16 2020 - 9:56am
  1. Batard was baked at 500F as well.
  2. Both spelt and rye were whole wheat.
  3. I always pre-heat the DO.
  4. I do have an oven thermometer in the oven permanently and use it to set the temp.
  5. I did spray water on top of batard just before putting it in the oven. Maurizio says it's optional, but I decided to do it.
  6. About a cup and a couple of ice cubes.

Sounds like I need to give it a shot again with a different recipe and without spraying the top of the loaf.

  

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy
Feb 16 2020 - 10:36am

no need to change recipes.  Just tweak this one.

It sounds to me like you'll improve things just by reducing the temp at which you bake the naked batard.  Might have to bake it a tad longer to compensate.  Loosely tenting with foil for the first half of the bake might help. 

---

Here's a big secret:  E_v_e_r_y recipe needs tweaked/adjusted to meet your specific local conditions.   No two bags of flour are the same.  Every brand/type of oven is different.  Everyone's water is different.  Everyone's ambient temp is different. Everyone's starter is different.  Refrigerator temps are different. People mix, knead,  slap-and-fold, and stretch-and-fold differently.  

Everything is all wish-washy, wibbly-wobbly, gooey, nubulous, smokey, non-specific, well maybe, try it and see.  Baking is not like math where 1 + 1 always always always equals 2.  In real kitchens, the answer is sometimes 1.99999 or 2.00001.   But, in "real life kitchens" both 1.99999 and 2.00001 are "close enough."