For longer than I would care to admit, despite using a steam pan on the bottom oven rack I could never get good oven spring, much less a gringne, in our home oven.
Eventually I tried a dutch oven, and things got a lot better. And then I got into high whole wheat or rye breads, and the oven spring got smaller.
I'm hoping to bake 2 rye loaves for our Thanksgiving hosts, which would be a lot more convenient on a baking stone. I happened to see an article by Maurizio Leo on steaming baking-with-steam-in-your-home-oven/. He recommended a stone on the rack above the baking stone, along with the steam pan on the bottom rack. And, he wrote that Hamelman recommends a spritz 5 minutes into the bake as well.
I tried the pan, 2 stones, and a spritz Oven Set-Up for Steaming (without the lava rock or towels) and I got this with 66% rye 66% Sourdough Rye Photos.
I'm sold on this steaming set-up.
Have you tried Sylvia's towel method - that seems to get many positive reviews https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20162/oven-steaming-my-new-favorite-way
Thanks, I may give it a try if the plain water pan + spritz doesn't work consistently