Funky oven problems
I live in a rental for the moment while my husband and I are buying a house. The oven here is a brand of electric oven made by Whirlpool called "Roper", they also make lawn tractors. The lawn tractors they make are pretty good, but the oven... not so much. The main problem is that I can't get a nice bubbly crackly crust on my boules and baguettes, even on my sandwich loaves because there is this wierd pipe coming up through the back of the stove that vents all of the heat and steam out into my kitchen (yeah this is really great for my cooling bill, I live in the south and my oven blows 450 degree air into my kitchen). I slather my loaves with water and put a pan of water into the oven, then mist them occasionally, and they still only come out mediocre and god forbid I forget to do all of these things, I get a leathery crust on my baguettes that is 1/8 in thick. Any ideas on what I can do?