The Fresh Loaf

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First bake in new gas oven / getting the crust just right

fredsbread's picture
fredsbread

First bake in new gas oven / getting the crust just right

Hi everyone! I've been baking artisan/sourdough bread for a little over 5 years now, but my wife and I just moved into our first house, which the seller was nice enough to put a brand new gas range/oven in. Previously I had done all my baking in electric ovens, so I read several posts on TFL about gas ovens and was a bit intimidated by the difficulties that they can present. Luckily, I was able to apply the tips y'all provided and get pretty good results on my first try, so this post is a big thank you to everyone here! That said, it isn't quite perfect yet, so I would like some feedback to see what I can do differently.

My old setup in the electric oven was this:

  • a custom baking steel made by a welder friend to leave about 1" of space around the edges of the oven, placed on a rack on the third slot from the bottom
  • an aluminum baking pan (~9"×13") filled with lava rocks on a rack on the bottom slot
  • preheat oven to 500°F for 1 hr before loading loaves
  • immediately before loading loaves, plug vent below controls with a cotton towel
  • after loading loaves, squirt water liberally onto lava rocks with an old honey bottle, then close oven door and reduce temp to 350°F
  • bake with steam for 20 minutes, then release steam, increase temp to 425°F, and bake for another 30 minutes

When I'm only baking 2 loaves at a time, the crust comes out really crispy, but I've started selling at a farmers market and the reason I got the custom baking steel was to fit 4 loaves in the oven at the same time. When I bake 4 loaves, even though I get good color the crusts are very soft, and bend without any sound rather than cracking. In addition to testing my ability to steam the gas oven, I wanted to a) bring back the crispy crust, and b) see if I could reduce the total bake time to 40 minutes so that it doesn't take as long to bake for the market.

When I did my first bake in the gas oven, this was the setup:

  • I usually bake sourdough, but for convenience with this test I used commercial yeast - I will be testing a bigger batch with sourdough in the next few days
  • same baking steel in the same position
  • switched aluminum pan for 10" cast iron skillet, which fits fewer lava rocks, but I figure the increased heat capacity of the pan makes up for it
  • preheated to 500°F with convection for 1 hr
  • before loading loaves, I turned the oven off and plugged the vent below the controls with a cotton towel
  • after loading the loaves, I used a funnel to dump about 1.5 cups water onto the lava rocks with the oven door mostly closed
  • baked with steam (oven off) for 20 minutes, then increased the temp to 450°F without convection and baked for another 20 minutes
  • I wasn't satisfied with the color after 20 minutes, so I left them for another 10 minutes (so much for reduced baking time)

The crust was definitely crispy, but now I'm wondering if I even want it to be crispy because it was thicker and tougher (thus harder to bite in a sandwich) than I've been used to lately.

So my main question for y'all is this: is it possible to get a nice crispy crust without making it too chewy or tough? It's been so long since I baked a small batch in an electruc oven that I don't remember if they were always like this or if the drier air in the gas oven is causing this. My next idea is to use convection and/or a higher temperature to finish the bake faster, but I worry that this will dry out the crust even further and make the problem worse.

 

Any advice or comments would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Fred

PeterS's picture
PeterS

Fred. your crumb looks excellent and your technique is very good. I baked similarly in a gas oven for many years with good results like this.  

In my experience, sourdoughs always have tougher crusts than plain yeasted breads and additionally toughened by long fermentation times.  I haven't tested this lately, but steam time will also affect crust thickness.  I don't think the overall baking time has too much of an effect on the crust thickness of high hydration doughs.

You could try a formula with a sourdough poolish or biga for flavor, with a short(er) fermentation time and spiked with yeast in the final dough to compensate for the shorter fermentation and reduced sourdough percentage.

I've always assumed a gas oven that vents its combustion gases through the oven (instead of around it) is going to be moister than an electric oven.  That said, I now bake in an electric oven and my times are not that much different.

Each oven is a little different, even two models of the same oven.  You'll have to do a few trials to optimize your conditions.

In a properly pre-heated oven, baking stone at 440-460°F (measured with an Infra-Red thermometer; any one of the $15-25 models are fine--they don't have to be high precision devices), I bake 70-75% hydration doughs for 15 minutes under steam (vent blocked), then 20-28 mins at 450°F, vented.  The oven should be fully warmed up before baking; as you probably know, the walls and especially the stone will lag the air temp of the oven.  When I remove the towel from the vent, I also open the oven for a long pause to vent the steam well (be careful...) & then rotate the loaves 180°.  Obviously, residual steam impedes browning.

°F lower than the bottom.  I think you could probably raise your oven temp to 460-465°F and save a little time.

boosthill1's picture
boosthill1

 

My crust comes out really crispy when I bake two loaves at a time, but I recently started selling at a farmers market and the custom baking steel allows me to bake four loaves simultaneously.

fredeharl95's picture
fredeharl95

Sounds great :) I am a newbie here and got a lot of new ideas after reading different comments, Excited to be here.