Has anyone made this bread in a combi-steam oven instead of using a Le Creuset? If so, what settings do you use?
Wanda
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Has anyone made this bread in a combi-steam oven instead of using a Le Creuset? If so, what settings do you use?
Wanda
Wanda, there is a fair amount of info here https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4050171/sourdough-bread-in-miele-combi-steam-oven#n=80
Thank you for your help. However, I had already been on that thread. Someone posted, asking that very question, but no one replied to it. I’ll have to fiddle around.
Did you see this response?
1. I pre-heated the steel and the oven to 350 degrees and 60 % steam. ( I wanted to make sure there was moisture in the oven when my bread went in.) I pre-heated for 30 minutes.
2. The next stage, when I put the bread dough in, I kept the oven at 350 but went to 100% moisture and baked for 30 minutes. I didn't used a dutch oven for this bread. Just put it on parchment paper and slid it in on a pizza peel.
3. The final stage was 435 degrees for 20 minutes at 0% humidity. I think I could have gone a little longer, but didn't want to overdo things.
Some of the other users said they increased the temp when they loaded the oven to make sure it added steam.
Hi @barryvabeach,
I just got my new Miele 7440 Steam Oven and baked sourdough twice so far. I couldn't find helpful instructions in the booklet that came with it, so I asked the Microsoft Co-Pilot for help. ;) He suggested a similar way you were doing: Preheat oven @ 350F for 30 min, set steam to 60%, add dough and bake for 30 min, then turn off steam and up the heat to 435F and bake another 15 min. That worked, but I'm wondering whether I could start hotter and then go down like I would with the Challenger Pan? How long does it take the steam to work? Do I have to have steam the whole time the oven preheats? I thought that I would preheat to 450F with no steam, then add the dough once the oven is hot, and then add the steam at 100% for 25 min. After that, got down to 400F with 0% steam for another 20 min. I don't know if that would work, but it seems weird to me to start the temp so low and have the steam going the whole time. Then, when I open the door, the steam escapes.
Another question I have has to do with the "steel" you have. I just used the baking tray the oven came with and put the dough on a piece of parchment. The tray is pretty heavy and thick and probably does take 30 min to get hot enough. If I get a thinner steel, I might not have to preheat that long.
Thanks for any input you can give me!
My bread is a 70% whole grain freshly milled (hard red wheat & spelt) with wet red wheat sprouts and seeds & beer as fluid.
If the initial temperature is too high, the crust will tend to stiffen before the maximum expansion has been reached. So it makes sense to start with a lower temperature. OTOH, a hot baking steel or stone pumps a lot of heat into the bottom of the loaf that helps the rise in the oven. So preheating the steel hotter could be a good move. It takes 45 minutes to an hour in my oven. Your baking tray is lighter weight and so would have less heat to transfer to the loaf; this could mean that a good hot preheat of the tray would be useful.
I don't have one of these steam ovens, but it's also possible that when you create the steam, the oven temperature drops for a time. If that's the case, then even if you started out with a higher setting the actual temperature would be lower during the initial rise. IOW, the exact initial bake setting might not matter very much; the steel/tray preheat temperature would be what counts the most.
TomP
Great looking loaf. I have played a bit with different approaches, though not really sure there is one that is best. Things I have tried include - using the bake mode, and pressing the manual steam button every minute or two the first few minutes before loading, then the first few minutes after loading ( the bake mode seems to run the fan a little slower than convection mode );
Preheat using convection at 400, but adding a tray with some cordierite stone pieces when I preheat the steel, then add some towels and boiling water a minute or two before I load the loaf, then again right after loading the loaf ( though I don't press the steam button using this approach - so it is much easier than above), then switching to combi steam 100% at 430.
preheating, without steam, at 400, then turning up to 430 - pushing the manual steam button a few times just before loading, then loading and switching to combi steam 100% at 430 ( the theory is that if I preheat to 430, when I switch to combi, it won't add much steam because the oven is aready up to temp, and when it goes to raise the temp from 400 to 430 it will add steam ) , then turning back to convection no steam after 8 minutes,.
I also tried using a baking stone, but was never all that impressed - I wondered whether that sucked up some of the humidty, and the steel is just easier to handle.
Let me know what you think, I use my combi near all the time ( though not just for bread ) and very rarely use my regular oven, because the combi preheats so fast.
Thanks for the answer, Barry. Yes, using the manual steam was how I actually baked a sourdough at our Miele Experience Center! That's what the assistant there suggested, but she also said that a longer steam exposure might give me a different result. I think I'll do option 3 next time. That sounds promising. I haven't done anything else yet with the oven; we're just slowly moving stuff into the kitchen after cooking in the garage for 6 months!
Thanks again,
Sabine
Almost 2 years since this post appeared, and hopefully you've figured it out? If not, I've been fiddling around with baking artisan sourdough on a baking steel in the Miele CSO. I've had pretty good success lately so let me know if you'd like any more info. I've seen the houzz thread, too, and while somewhat helpful I've since gone in my own direction.
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Whatever direction you are going on seems to be working - care to explain.
BTW, I have been playing with two different methods lately. In both, I preheat a pizza steel ( 1 /8 inch ) for 20 to 25 minutes.
For one option, I then preheat in combi mode, convection bake, 100% steam to 400 for several minutes, then load, and bake at 435 100% steam for 8 minutes, then convection bake at 435 0% steam for 22 minutes. I program all the stages and have them saved, so I only open to load the dough and don't open to vent the steam.
Option 2, after preheat, I do a manual burst of steam 3 times, then load, then a manual burst of steam 3 more times ( it takes about 1 minute per burst ) then finish at regular convection cooking. Not sure if the manual burst throws in more steam than combi mode at 100% moisture, but at some point steam is venting out of the oven like mad. Still just playing around, so not sure which one I prefer. I haven't found a way to program the bursts of steam into a cooking program on the Miele.
I think we are following similar paths. Here's my sequence:
(at this transition I load the loaf...quickly to preserve steam!)
My steel is 1/4". So I essentially give it around 30 minutes at max temp to really soak up the heat before I load the loaf, the last 10 minutes of which are steamed. I too lament the inability to have a burst of steam within a program! The entire programming interface leaves a lot to be desired, but I digress.
Cheers! And happy baking,
Diane
Diane, thanks , I tried surround once, but didn't think it did much. I was hoping it would turn off the fan, but it didn't , at least on mine.
Ditto