Hot Oven or Cold
Since I was trying something new I thought I'd try two things new..well, new to me. Thanks to you, Dabrownman and Barbara for the information about using cold or hot DO's . I put the first loaf into the cold DO, cold oven. Put combo cooker in at same time (empty). Fifteen minutes later when the oven was hot, I put second loaf into the heated combo cooker and started timing about 15 minutes for covered steaming time. Thought this would give me a good side to side comparison. And it certainly did, --you can hardly tell which loaf is which! I still cannot imagine using fresh starter much less baking from a cold oven....but the results are just short of amazing.
Our sisterly challenge this weekend is to make Bretzel Rolls. Today is a baking in tandem kind of schedule but by the end of the afternoon we will be sending pictures and results back and forth from Texas to Washington state. Helen is all done, and her rolls are beautiful, crusty brown and shiny. Time to get floured up here!
option/combination, that I wish had used on my 100% hydro 100% whole grain kamut and Spelt flat boules in hindsight, is to actually proof the dough in the oiled, cold DO and then baking it starting from either a cold or hot oven. I'm sure my flat boules, at the end of bake, would not have lost their once lofty height they once had at the end of proof. We will try this to see if it actually makes a difference. We have used this with other breads and it worked fine.
Glad your test came out well and you know that either way works well.
Look forward to your Bretzel Roll post. Now I have to look them up and see what they are :-)
Just a pretzel roll. Made some into pretzels to suit the tasting crowd. I checked your posting, which by the way looks great, but no recipe so we all used one from food.com
After gently (?) dropping the dough into the DO, I wondered if it couldn't just proof in there but it was too late to ask at that point. Yikes! "the oiled DO"? I'm lucky that I didn't have to pry it out with no oil!
oil the sides of the DO if I was going to proof the bread in it . I always put parchment paper in the bottom of the DO, either hot or cold. We want the bread to come out very easily when we dump it out hot to finish baking on the stone for the last 5 minutes and to crisp on the stone for 5 minutes with oven off and the door ajar.
I checked the Bretzel recipe from food.com after reading your post and have been looking for a pretzel bread recipe for hamburger buns. Will have to wait for you 3 girls bakes and post see if this recipe is worth converting to SD and YW :-)
This is how Barb's bake turned out! Awesome... Helen and I copied her! Helen found us the recipe~!
with Cold oven etc... techniques.
The pleasures of home baking!!! And sharing sisterly texts! YAY!