oven with injection steam
Hi everyone,
So far I baked nice crusty bread in my home kitchen in a regular oven creating steam using a pan and hot water.
After many years of this treatment my oven door gets rusty, noisy etc. As I am planning to replace this oven, I don't want to get a new oven knowing that I will damage it. I am looking for an oven that is designed to use steam. So far I have seen the Doyon brand, which is great but expensive.
Recently I have hear of the Dacor oven which use steam to cook and bake and it looks like Samsung is carrying a similar oven too.
Has anyone of you used these oven for baking crusty artisan bread creating steam at the beginning of the baking time and being able to control when you want the steam to stop?
Any comments on your experience or suggestion for oven with built in device for steam will be greatly appreciated.
There are many ovens that inject steam, they are called combination, or combis or steam convection oven. Wolf and Thermador make ones that are pretty expensive , till you look at the pricing of a Gaggenau. Miele also makes a few. When you add in the pricing of plumbing for those that are plumbed, it can end up costing a lot. I have a discontinued model from Viking, but I have not had much success with steaming for bread. The videos that I have seen of commercial bread ovens show a ton of steam being injected as the bread is being cooked, my combi is much more gradual. I haven't played enough with it, but the controls are pretty confusing ( when you select the setting for bake with steam, it goes into that mode, but doesn't actually add steam, until you hit another button - how silly is that ) Mine also doesn't vent as well as a regular convection oven, so I don't get as much browning as my stand alone old Cadco. Lately, I have been using the inverted stainless steel bowl that is just a little larger than the loaf on a stone. Before that , I used a cast iron combo cooker, then Dan A posted some results which suggest that does not get back up to heat when the top is on. If you read the reviews of the Rofco, it seems like that would be a less expensive option than an combi - though a combi does have some advantages for cooking meals.
I have a AEG multi function combi oven.
The first thing is that, these are NOT steam injection. They are more like steam producing ! I would imagine that most domestic ovens are similar unless they cost a small fortune. You put the water in a little slide out container, it goes down into a indentation in the floor of the oven and it produces steam.
For bread it has a "bread baking " mode which is a disaster IMHO. Way tooo much steam for too long.
IF however you play around a bit, pre heat WITH steam, with the correct amount of water so as it evaporates at the time you want to stop steaming, and then re set controls to a regular or fan baking mode you can get results.
I am sure that once figured out and understood it'll work OK. My personal biggest complaint with all these new ovens is the digital controls. I'm old school analog type. Open oven door, stick hand in, Yep, hot enough let's go.
I am fortunate in that the combi oven is a second unit in our remodeled kitchen and my bigger gas range is my tool of choice. Rest of the family loves the fancy fangled electric thingy that you need NASA training to turn on, i'm not even going to mention setting the clock to the right time.
The combi steam oven is very useful in certain situations, but in my case if it was either or, I would stick with the gas range, but like I said, we are lucky , we have both.
Combi type ovens are full of potential if you play around with it and get creative specially if you start in one mode and then switch it to a different mode to tweak your results. Also take into account what size oven do you need/ want. Steam capable oven seem to be smaller.