Baking on a steel
A couple weeks ago I decided I wanted to bake on my steel, rather than in a dutch oven.
My steel is a bakingsteel.com, 3/8" thick steel. It seems like it would be large enough to do two loaves at once when doing something like FWSY or Tartine basic recipes.
However, upon tipping my first FWSY loaf out of my banneton onto the steel it was evident that two would not fit (the loaf really ended up spreading itself out).
So, I had to bake one at a time.. ok fine this time around.. stuff happens.
The next issue:
Oven spring. It got SOME, but it did was still closer to something like a focaccia thickness than your typical batard or boule. I'm not entirely sure what happened here and why it didn't spring other than I did not get great slashes on these loaves.
The NEXT "issue":
The first loaf was clearly done at the 25 minute mark (at 475, the FWSY recipe's recommended temperature) and the bottom was even a bit burned.
2nd loaf I ran for about 22-23 mins to avoid the burnt bottom.. again very little oven spring.
So my questions become:
Do loaves not baked in a dutch oven or cloche just not rise as much? I added half a dozen ice cubes to a metal pan that had pre-heated with the steel/oven with each loaf as I put it on the steel so I should have had steam.
The bread was tasty/fine (aside from not great spring) with a 22-25 minute bake... but this is half the time that most recipe's call for when baking in a D.O. Will this become problematic or is this part of the problem?
Here's a pic of the loaves:
when you don't use a DO. Basically, the DO restricts how much the dough can spread, basically forcing it to expand upwards. So, even if a loaf baked on steel increases just as much in volume, it's likely not to look that way since a greater proportion of the expansion will have been out rather than up, meaning the loaf will be wider but flatter.
Improved shaping will mean less spread, which, assuming the same amount of expansion, will result in more of it being upward.
Yeah I realize that the DO is going to limit spread.. but I want to say that professional bakers who don't have dozens of dutch ovens to bake in (that would be silly) don't seem to get this much spread. I suppose a tighter shaping might help.. these FWSY loaves don't call for much since they kind of want the bread to have the natural 'fissure' from the seam being where the oven spring occurs.
What about the baking time being 22-25 minutes, versus 45-50? Anything detrimental coming from that? I assume that's just because of how conductive the steel is compared to the cast iron?
Bake with an inverted bowl or DO over it. I think you don’t have sufficient steam. In all of my large ovens, bread takes 22 minutes to bake (82%hydration). In my regular home oven it takes twice as long. Oven can be a factor but I would bet on it being steam.
I've been baking Hammelman's Vermont Sourdough on my Baking steel (also the 3/8" model) for the last few months. I bake as two freeform batards, and it took me a while to nail oven-spring. My issues were basically what Arjon said above: Shaping MATTERS.
What worked (for me) was:
Here's an example loaf I started producing after all of that:
How long does your bake take? Are you seeing half the time like I am? I haven’t tried again after this post as my Dutch oven bakes have been going well.
I have not been able to make bread work on my steel. I'm sure the problem is me --- but I've stopped trying to do bread on it.
I make pizza on the steel all the time and it is splendid for that. The pizza puffs up and gets a beautiful leopard spotted bottom and it's done super fast (like 90-250 seconds depending on how high you preheat it).
If you figure out the secret for doing bread on the steel, please share and maybe I'll try again :)