Oven fan runs while heating, vents all steam.

The LG oven I bought a few years ago, runs its fan continually while the oven is heating. Even on bake mode without any convection.  There doesn’t seem to be a way to turn this off.

This means that when I bake my normal weekly load of four loaves, very little of the steam manages to get to the bread. It’s pumped out pretty quickly as the convection fan runs.

I preheat a pan full of lava stones, and a smaller cake pan with a towel in it (on the level below the pizza stones I bake on). I put boiling water in both. There should be enough steam to keep four loaves in steam for the first 12 minutes or so of the week before I turn the loaves around for another 12 minutes or so. 

But without a way to keep the steam in, I don’t get much opening of the crust, the ears are small and the slashes seal too quickly.

The only way I can figure to keep the steam in the oven is to heat it up to its maximum temperature of 500°, quickly put the loaves and steam the pans, and turn the oven off for the first 10 minutes. Then there is some steam still in the oven when turn the heat back on.  But by then (even with a one-hour-preheat for the oven and pizza stones) the oven temperature is down to about 350°, which is not ideal.  This means the elements come on hard when I ask it to het back up to 430°, and can burn the tops of the loves.

Ideally, I would be baking with steam at about 430° to 460° or so.

Perhaps I should settle for turning it back on to 400 so it doesn’t heat so long?

Baking each loaf individually in a Dutch oven is a possibility, I guess, but it means a much longer time spent in the kitchen, and the possibility of over proofing the last loves in a sequence of four loaves.

Do any of you have any other suggestions for how to keep steam on loaves when the fan runs while heating the oven?

Alternatively, do you have recommendations for a stove/oven that is excellent for steaming and baking bread that I should start saving for when I replace this oven in a few years?