Hello,
New to the forums but I've been reading around for a long time and have been making san francisco sourdough breads on and off for a long time with pretty good success.
I have always baked in a cast iron dutch oven which has generally produced great results but I wanted to try and make batards so I bought the breadtopia clay cooker. Given what I read on the forums it seemed like most people had great success with clay cookers so I was optimistic.
However my first loaves in the clay cooker did not really turn out as I hoped, I didn't get the amount of oven spring I'm used to (I think some of which may be due to poor shaping given I'm not experience with shaping batards) but I also noticed the bottom of the bread did not get that really dark crust that I get with the cast Iron and I absolutely love.
I preheated the oven at 500 degrees for an hour with the clay baker in it then baked covered for 30 minutes and then uncovered until done.
So i have a few questions I am really hoping you all could help out with:
1. Is a clay baker just not going to ever give me the bottom crust I want?
2. Are clay baker's less ideal in terms of oven spring?
3. Could I potentially get the best of both worlds and mediate the problem by placing my clay cooker directly on top of a baking steel? Or would that not really do anything?
4. If I can't get the bottom heat/oven spring out of a clay cooker that I like what are my other options with batards? I actually tried a run with my baking steel using the lodge cast iron pan and lava rocks but I got weird results with my oven heat and had black spots on the top of my loaf after 20 minutes of baking. I thought about getting another baking stone to regulate top heat but I thought that cooking in the clay cooker would be a safer bet (maybe I was wrong). Are their cast iron options that allow me to bake batards? Or any potential solutions to my issues with baking uncovered on a baking steel?
Thanks so much for your help in advance. Maybe I should just go back to making Boules....
One is in my oval dutch oven. :p
The other is on my pizza stone using a cover so the dough creates its own steam like when using a DO.
what size oval dutch oven do you need to fit a batard?
This may seem fairly large, but keep in mind that the loaf doesn't have to fill the entire width or length of the pot.
for baking sourdough batards. 2 500g batards will fit nicely on the steel. I use the Sylvia's towel method for generating steam. I have a KitchenAid electric convection oven and following a pre-heat of the steel at 500F for 45 minutes, bread is baked with steam at 460F for 15 minutes at which point the towel pan is removed and the bread continues to bake at 420F WITH convection for another 15 minutes. I get uniform results everytime. Make sure and calibrate your oven.
I might try the dutch oven approach but our built in oven is not at my height and I don't want to be bending over putting in and taking out a DO; it wouldn't be back friendly for me.
When I tried this I had a terrible problem with the top heat not being regulated and getting black spots on the top of my loaves.... I think that could potentially be solved with a pizza stone above the baking steel but not sure if I want to go that direction just yet.
What setting were you using with your oven? Conventional ovens only have top heat when the broiler setting is used; the bake setting heats from the bottom. If it is a convection oven, there is a fan at the back of the oven that runs when that feature is on. For normal bread baking with steam this is not good as the steam is pushed out of the oven.
I have a conventional oven and the steel was set low in my oven a generated a lot of steam with a combination of the lava rock and towel method but after 20 minutes I opened the oven and had gotten very little oven spring and the crust on the loaves had overdeveloped with black spots in certain places.... like you said the top element does not come on to heat the oven so I'm not sure why this happened.
I have my steel right on the middle shelf with the towel steam on the bottom. I suspect you might have had poor steam circulation.
Yeah I had my steel just one rack above my steam, sounds like it needs to be higher than that?
I have five shelf levels in my oven. Baking steel is on level 3 and the steam pan is on level one. I think what happened with your set up is that the steam was condensing on the bottom of the steel rather than permeating throughout the oven. Move your steel up one level and you should get the desired results.
Alan, between your advice about your placing of the steel and the steam in the oven and figuring out that I was not scoring quite deep enough I seemed to have solved my issues and I was able to bake some absolutely beautiful batards, probably the best bread I've ever made.... I will try and post a couple of pictures when I get a chance.
Thank you so much for your help!
Once I have started using Emile Henry clay - I got rid of everything else. I have several posts here and have all of their bread products. Many of the people I know that use metal end up with burned bottoms and cant' seem to regulate that and have switched to clay for that very reason when they saw my results.
When I think about this I consider that people love the results of brick ovens - clay. I don't understand why you can't or think you can't get the heat from the bottom. Mine gets plenty hot and I find it is a more consistent "mellow" heat that does not burn or have hot spots.
As with any tool it can take time to find the right combination of all the variables, but I can get exactly the crusts I want consistently. Another opinion to consider.
I have two stone/clay style sets and developed the "soft on the bottom" problem over time. It started when I moved my water pan on the very bottom rack directly below my stone which is normally placed second to the bottom. I moved it back to the very top rack and the crust on the bottom is better now. It's still not dark brown like I've seen other baker's get. I have been wanting to try a cast iron set just to compare.
Because my oven is what it is, I do rotate 180' when I take the lid off. Oh, I do start off with my stone preheated to 500f + 10 min then I drop in the dough.
I really never got that magnificently crazy oven spring. I think its because I don't get a good tight shaping, but, since its tastes good I don't get too many complaints about it.
good luck