In recent weeks I've been kibitzing a friend who's starting up a new restaurant where he's been trying out a recently purchased, second hand, commercial "combo oven".  The oven is proving a bit cranky and he's working out the bugs and tinkering with bake times and temperatures.  I got a chance to bake a couple test loaves in the oven and was very impressed with the "jump rise" achieved in "combo" mode (heat with superheated steam in the oven).

^My friend's big "combo oven" (not something for the home kitchen!)

^test loaf from the big "combo oven"

You can clearly see how the loaf lifted itself the sheet pan when cooked in the combo oven with a lot of steam.

Impressed, I tried "cooking with steam" in my home oven by dumping a cup of hot water in a pan near the bottom of the oven and slamming the door.  I'd previously thought (erroneously) that this would keep the oven near the boiling point of water, but that's wrong.  The oven runs near the set temperature (usually ~450F) and there's simply a lot of humidity in the oven, near saturation.

Here's a loaf I baked with steam at home:

^loaf baked with steam (with my beloved wife's home-made tomato jam on a slice)

Notice that the above loaf is round on the bottom as well as on the top from lifting itself off the baking sheet!

In my home oven experiments I notice when I cook with steam this way I'm getting much more browning on the top of the loaf than the bottom.  I'm delighted with the jump rise I get with steam, and I think I should be able to get the top and bottom more similar with some more tinkering.

Now, on to shopping for  and using brotforms/bannetons. 

A shopping report first. My friend with the new restaurant mentioned needing some inexpensive baskets for forming/proofing loaves.  I did some shopping and found a big selection of inexpensive baskets at luckyclovertrading.com including three kinds of "brotform" basket and also some willow "banneton"-style baskets.  They don't sell cloth liners for the brotforms.  That's OK because my friend with the restaurant usually lines his proofing baskets with cloth restaurant napkin which I found cheap at another site.

I ordered some brotform baskets and some napkins from the above sources.  My friend with the restaurant really likes the brotform baskets and I do too.  The napkins just came a few minutes ago; I like them because they have a very tight, shiny weave that should be hard for dough to stick to.  My friend has used similar napkins with good success.

I've had a little trouble occasionally in the past with dough sometimes sticking to custom made brotform liners. The ones I have fit very nicely but have a softer, slightly less tightly woven fabric than my new napkins.  Recently it occurred to me part of the reason dough stuck to the liner sometimes I've had problems scoring loaves was I'm not used to letting a loaf "rest" on the counter until the surface dries out a bit and a skin forms.  I tried doing exactly that, let the dough rest uncovered until the surface didn't feel sticky, dusted it with a little rice flour, and plopped it inverted into a lined brotform.  It worked great!  The dough showed zero inclination to stick coming out of the brotform, and scoring was a breeze as the "skin" on the loaf parted under the razor blade!

Hi all,

Just got back from holiday and was lucky enough to find a small town bakery that was selling brotforms so got myself one as a holiday treat. Tried it out for the first time over the weekend and encountered a couple of issues that I thought people here might be able to advise about:

1. When I removed the dough from the brotform after proofing it had formed a skin around it which, apart from any other negative effects it may have had, made it difficult to score properly. I only covered the top of the brotform with a linen cloth whilst proofing so I am wondering if I put the whole thing inside a food-grade plastic bag next time if it might keep it hydrated better and prevent a skin from forming?

2. On removing the dough from the brotform to the baking tray the dough didn't hold it's shape: it started spreading outwards. It was a pain de campagne dough so it wasn't really that wet. My thoughts were that I was either too rough plopping it out of the brotform onto the tray or that perhaps I hadn't created enough surface tension when I was forming the dough into a boule.

As you can see I have my own ideas as to what caused these problems but I am interested to hear from you all to see if anyone can confirm or deny my thoughts or provide some suggestions of their own.

Thanks in advance,

Shaun

Recently I've been finding tiny bugs nestled into the cracks between the strips of cane on my bannetons.  To be honest, it's really disgusting.  I am meticulous about brushing the old flour off before I put them away, and I've never had this problem before.  But over the past few months,  it has become a consistent issue.  Luckily, the bugs are tiny and very slow, so it's easy to tap them off.  But it's still an unappealing situation.  I can't tell if the insects are coming in from the environment, or if they're coming from the flour itself.  Has anyone had this problem, and if so,  have you found a solution?

I've always been a little sad that because I use a linen tea towel to line my baskets, very little (if any) of the pattern of the basket shows through in the flour on the finished loaf. (I do have one small round basket that looks very natural / foodsafe, so I have tried that one without a towel, with good results. But my other baskets kind of look like the wicker may be chemically treated, so I didn't want to try them.)

A little while ago I had an idea how to get the nice pattern without a brotform, and I finally remembered to try it in my last bake! The recipe was the ubiquitous Norwich Sourdough from Susan's Wild Yeast Blog.

My idea was to use a "ribbed" linen placemat to line the basket, instead of a tea towel. I have some natural (undyed, or at least appear so) placemats which have been through the wash several times, so I was pretty sure they were foodsafe. Here's a poorly-lit picture of the one I used:
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I sprinkled some rice flour on the placemat first, before dusting with quite a lot of white (AP) flour. This worked very well, the loaf turned out cleanly after proofing, no sticking at all. And the resulting pattern on the loaf was great! Picture:

In the next picture you can see this loaf with its "dough-brothers", one of which was proofed in the aforementioned foodsafe basket, the other three in baskets/bowls lined with tea towels. I kind of like the variety!

(Note: the loaves have a bit of a golden color to them which I attribute to substituting some of the white flour in the recipe with kamut flour, which is an ancient relative of durum.)

Happy baking,
Mike

I've been raising my standard loaves in brotforms for quite a while.  Lately I've been getting blowouts rather than nice expansion.  It almost seems as though the top crust (the one that rests on the bottom when the loaf is rising in the basket) is drying out a little.  Feeling the tops of the loaves confirms this.  They dough is reasonably hydrated, but not at crazy ciabatta levels or anything.  I'd be more specific, but this is happening with a variety of recipes.

I bake on a stone, and use ice melting in a hot pan for steam.

I have not changed the way I cover the loaves during rising - oiled plastic wrap with a tea towel over that.

Should I brush the tops of the loaves with water?

-  Jessica

Hello,

Recently I have bought some bannetons  from Germany and I have few extra for sale.

If anyone Is interested and live  in the area of  Calgary, Alberta -  please check my ad on Kijiji.

Thanks

http://calgary.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-home-garden-Bannetons-Brotform-Brotformen-or-Dough-Rising-Baskets-W0QQAdIdZ183928547

Hello all,

I've been on a quest to find a reasonable priced coiled wicker dough-rising basket.  I finally found it but it requires a $50 dollar order to even place the order (they are wholesale to public).  And yes, even when I order 2 of all: round, oval, rectangular - and throw something else in I'm still not to $50.  If anyone is the in the Houston, Texas area and is looking, I'm happy to combine orders.  Or I suppose I could order, receive and then send on to you if you are not local.  The prices are crazy-good for untreated rattan coiled baskets - $6 each. 

Here is an example!

Let me know what you think (also if you have had poor experiences with this company in the past). 

Thanks!  Mary

I want to purchase Brotforms and/or Bannetons and need some advice.

Lined or unlined, that is the question ? I'd hoped to stop at that one question, since I could use the Shakespeare ending, I will anyway :)

I want to get one round and one oval, what sizes should they be ?

Ready in 3 1/2 hours?  (Make it longer if you wish, use 1/2 teaspoon of yeast, add salt & caraway and use cold water to make it rise slower.)

Wheat shaped form ... White Bread   crusty

• 450g hot water (you can just manage to keep a finger in it)
• 7g instant yeast
• 650 g Wheat flour (250g AP, 400g Bread flour)
• 1 1/2  to 2 teaspoons table salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground caraway
• olive oil for bowl & form

Pour hot water into a large 2.5 ltr. mixer bowl and sprinkle with yeast.  Add the flours and stir until all the flour is moistened and a shaggy dough has formed.  Cover and let stand 2 hours or until the dough has risen up to the cover.  Remove cover and scrape out dough onto a lightly floured surface.  Sprinkle with the salt and caraway.  Fold or roll up the dough and knead to blend for about two minutes.  Shape into a tight ball and cover with the bowl.

Soak top and bottom of a Clay form (total volume 2 liters) 10 min in warm water.  Allow to drip dry and surface water to absorb, one minute.  Smear inside with olive oil.  Re-shape and tighten dough to form a loaf.  Rub with oil and place into bottom form.   Oil the inside of cover and place over dough.  Set in cold oven for 15 minutes.   Turn on oven to 225°c  (440°F) on Hot air (convection) and time for 45 minutes.   Remove form and brown loaf another 5 minutes in hot oven on rack.   Cool on rack for 15 minutes and serve warm with bread knife on cutting board. 

I was given this form for Christmas without any instructions.  As you can see the ingredients add up to just over a kilo of dough, about the right amount to fill this two liter volume form.  The loaf crust is very crunchy and thick.  The crumb slightly chewy and tender.  I removed the top for the last 5 minutes of baking but wished I had removed the whole form to let the bottom brown more as well.   Slices are almost round and crumb is fine.  The oil in the form adds to an almost buttery flaky crust.   This loaf was sliced warm.

Mini

They have both German- and Slovakian-made cane brotforms and bannetons, both at prices rather less than I've seen most other places.

http://fantes.com/brotforms.html

Just wondering. Not getting a stand mixer opens up about $350 for some other needed bread-related things.