One of the holy grails of bread baking appears to be trapping steam over the loaf for the early part of the bake. Something occurred to me, and it's so simple that it's got to be stupid. I searched and couldn't find anything on it, so please explain to my exactly *why* it's stupid.
If you were to put a loaf of bread in the oven in the basic loaf bread pan, couldn't you just take an identical pan and put it on top of it upside down, like a lid? Wouldn't that be similar to a dutch oven?
You can, but if it sticks you will have trouble taking it off without ripping up half-baked loaf.
Yeah, I can see that, but if I non-stick the main pan, I could non-stick the cover, too.
Boldly go where no one has gone before. :-)
I might do that! But if it's common knowledge that it's a stupid idea, I didn't want to waste a day of bread baking.
I watched Baking with Steve and bless his heart he has a whole you tube about it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZBdhfq6YP4
D
So you're telling me that someone has already stolen my idea?
Some people have used a lightweight,disposable aluminum foil pan inverted over their loaf. Others have used large turkey roasters. There are many ways to bake a loaf!.
You don't normally steam breads that are meant for a loaf pan. But if you mean to cover a small torpedo loaf or something, then it will work like any other covering people use.
another way, if you don't have a second pan, is to shape a double layered piece of alu foil over the empty pan to make the shape of the pan, then invert over the filled loaf pan and pinch down the edges. :)
those metal springy clips originally made to hold a stack of 8 1-2"x 11"papers together. That was years ago. I actually did it and it worked fine:-) I always thought hinged pans on one long side, held together by a latch like a tool box on the other side would be a big seller and my billion dollar idea of the day.:-)
Putting another loaf pan on top of the loaf could certainly trap a little bit of steam, and would certainly do better than nothing, but it will limit the expansion of the loaf. Often when I bake in loaf pans, the top of my loaves have a tendency to spread out after breaching the top. Since an upside-down loaf pan would get thinner as it rises, it will probably affect the final shape of the loaf. But maybe that's not such a bad trade-off.
I'm still very new at this, and I'm sure it'll come together, but I'm not yet getting enough rise for any spillover. I made a loaf of white bread yesterday, and while tasty, it was a tad short. I got no oven spring whatsoever. That's actually what made me think of this. I was wondering if the top might be able to expand if it didn't harden so fast.
Yesterday's loaf:
your loaf pan so that it gets to the height you want - say an inch over the rim of the pan in the center but still only 90% proofed so that you still get the spring too. An easy way to do this is to estimate the amount of spring you want say 15% and then how much you want the dough to proof to still get that amount of spring - say 85%. if you deduct the 15% fro the 85% then you get 70% and that is how much dough you need to fill the pan.
Line your pan with a water proof bag and put it on your scale, Take the scale and then fill the pan with water to the brim and weigh that amount of water. If the water weighs 2240 g then divide it by 1.7 and you get 1318 g of dough to fill the pan just enough to get the look you are wanting
Happy baking
I've been using a Volrath steam table pan inverted over artisan loaves for awhile now. Originally I had problems of the bread sticking to the pan - a little PAM sprayed on the surface ended that and was allowed to "season" the surface so that it is now virtually non-stick (yeah, imagine that). I successfully tried baking a loaf in an oven bag somewhere on TFL, it worked but not as well as the SS Volrath cloche method. Doubled up aluminum foil and disposable aluminum turkey pans also work well.
The problem with steam pans is they only come in standard sizes to fit steam tables. I am thinking about buying two of them and cutting them crosswise so that when welded together they form a much longer cloche for baguettes and french bread.
Wild-Yeast