Convection is Awful and Ruining My Sourdough - How to Remedy?
Hi Bakers,
I've been invited to use a friends commercial kitchen to bake my sourdough bread. I've done several bakes over several days there, and have been disappointed with each one. Chief among my concerns is the fact that I cannot disable the convection mode. The convection is either "low" (which is ridiculously high) or "high" (which is like a jet engine). It is destroying my sourdough breads. There is no ear, no crust formed. It's just light brown, or seared, a big lump shape, the scoring disappears, and while the inside is quite tender and has its normal nice large crumb, the outside is awful. thick, chewy, bad. It's just completely unrecognizable when it comes out, and I'm running out of methods to experiment with trying to get steam into the oven.
I've tried lava rocks with boiling water in a cast iron alongside rolled up saturated towels, and misting. not sure what else there is to do except return to my own oven, which has "regular mode" (non convection) and which has always produced beautiful loaves with dark caramelized crusty loaves which shatter upon eating, and a hydrated, tender crumb inside.
I'm disappointed, but the mad scientist in me still wants to know if theres a way to make it work. Please! Before I give up, let me know what your thoughts are. What else may work? How do you work around this?
I'd love to make it work, and be able to use this commercial gas convection oven. I'm grateful for any pointers.
Thank you!
BreadRover
why you are using your friend's commercial oven?
it seems to me you could put each loaf in a dutch oven with the lid on for the first half of the bake or put two loaves in a roaster with the lid on for the first half of the bake. that would protect them from too much direct heat AND keep the crust moist till halfway through the bake, which would make for a nicer crust. but perhaps covering the loaves would negate part of the reason you're using your friend's oven?
I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that. Each loaf of bread is in its own dutch oven for the first part of the bake. I remove it and it already looks wrong. Theres no ear, no peel back of the score, etc. There's no "crust".
are you pre-heating the dutch ovens or - if not - are you adding time to the first half of the bake to compensate for the time used to heat the DOs?
yes, they are pre-heated.
If it's in a closed DO for the first part of the bake I do not see how it can matter. I assume you are at least proofing there - are you accounting for the possible temperature difference?
Check the temperature, it may be way off. I bake all my loaves in Dutch ovens under convection to equalize the temperature and prevent burning of the bottoms of the loaves. Mind you, this is in a home oven.
Most convection ovens recommend that the temperature needs to be lowered from what the recipe recommends, once you put your bread inside the dutch oven this no longer applies since you are now baking with radiant heat from the interior surface of the pot and contact heat from the bottom. The other thing that makes a difference and you may not believe is the colour of the dutch oven, ideally dark exterior and light interior. Good luck and I hope you find a solution that works for you.
Gerhard
Breadrover, I agree with the others. I have two ovens which are convection only, and one which can be used without the convection fan. I agree, it is nearly impossible to generate steam in many convection ovens. On one, there is a vent and the steam just goes out, on the other, it recirculates, but my guess is the steam goes over the heating element and gets vaporized very quickly. I generally use a dutch oven when using the convection ovens, and have no problems in them. As Gerhard says, when you use a dutch oven, the loaf has no idea that the convection fan is running, the only thing it feels is the temperature of the oven. If it is coming out wrong while still in a covered dutch oven, there is something else going wrong. As Danni suggests, it may be that the oven you are using has not been calibrated, and the temperature is way off. Or, is it possible the temperature of the commercial kitchen is different from your home, and that is effecting how long the bread takes to proof?
Thank you. That’s correct: i have a Dutch oven for each loaf I’m baking (10 at a time for comfortably to sling around during the bake). So I’m starting to think the Dutch ovens haven’t been preheated long enough (kitchen staff told me it only takes 20 minutes to preheat). I only had them in for 20 max before starting the bake. (Versus an hour in my home oven).
Maybe convection is irrelevant. Like if they already look weird when removing the Dutch oven lid after first part of the bake, it’s already screwed up. So. I’ll go back and preheat for a full hour. 500°. I’ll bring an internal thermometer for the oven. (I have no idea if the knobs are accurate). I think the issue is the loaves aren’t cooking enough in the Dutch ovens. Thank you.
Actually your DO does not need to be preheated at all prior to baking so that is not your problem either.
Have you tried that when the oven has no *radiant* heat?
I've always thought that the rate of heating of an object depends on its thermal conductivity and the temperature difference.
That only applies when the method of heating is via conduction...that doesn't happen much in an oven. In a traditional oven, radiation heats the pan and the pan heats the food. Convection happens, too, but it's not as effective as radiation, which is why the food in contact with the pan cooks faster. A fan helps, of course.
Probably the physical property that has the most relevance is the heat capacity of air, which, as a gas, is low. Put cold food in a hot oven and the food drops the temperature of the air much more than the air raises the temp of the food. The mass of the air is just so vastly smaller than the mass of the food, particularly a cast iron Dutch oven.
I’m looking forward to testing this weekend. I’ll preheat Dutch Ovens for a full hour and confirm the actual temperature in the oven. Thank you so much for your help, everyone. :)
I think your explanation is not entirely correct as convection ovens without any radiant heat bake faster and at cooler temperatures than conventional ovens. Convection ovens kind of work the reverse of windchill.
Gerhard
That isn't my experience using convection-only to cook several racks of cookies....took at least 50% longer.
It probably depends on what you're cooking. If you normally cook a roast in a rack sitting in a pan, it's not in contact with the pan, so you're getting mostly convection cooking no matter what sort of oven you have. A forced convection probably cooks that a lot faster.
It still seems self-evident to me that 20 minutes in a convection-only oven is not enough to imbue a cast-iron Dutch oven with the same amount of energy as a conventional oven for an hour.
Also noteworthy is that I cold proof the doughs overnight at 38°....and then pull them from the fridge, score, and put them in directly into the Dutch oven.