February 20, 2024 - 9:49am
How much steam is "normal" ?
I have been messing around with my countertop ovens a lot lately. One is a Panasonic NU-SC180B Convection/Steam oven.
I baked a couple batards using "Convection Steam" mode, and measured the weight of the water container before and after the 30-min bake. It used about 130 grams of water, or about 1/4 cup..
Does that sound like a reasonable amount of steam for a bake?
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I place my dough on the Dutch oven and place too much ice cubes and the pot temp was too low and the ear was not open well and the outside was chewy...
I think that is a reasonable amount of water for the steam. My Miele oven has a "moisture Plus" function that uses 100 ml of water per steam injection. I regularly use two steam injections (total 200 ml) at 5 minutes apart. After 15 minutes the oven is drying and is my que to lower the heat for the remainder of the bake. Works a treat.
Cheers,
Gavin.
That's good to know.
I think it depends a lot on the size of your oven, and how well sealed it is. My Bakers Pride oven is about one cubic foot in volume, and not sealed at all. It takes about 8 min. of steam from my pressure cooker to properly steam my loaves. That amounts to about 300 ml water total.
Your steam ovens are probably much better sealed, and if they are relatively small in volume, I'd expect you wouldn't need that much water. Your 130 ml water is probably in line with what I use. Hope this helps. Jim
Apologies for the late reply. I've since baked a couple times in similarly-sized ovens and agree with your assessment. Something in the 150-300ml range is "in the ballpark". Thanks for your input.