October 20, 2012 - 8:13am
Baking in an electric oven
Hello,
I'm trying to bake something in my oven but its not coming out like it does in the store. I want to replicate the way they cook in a gas oven in the store, which has the gas cooking from both sides of the oven. However, my home oven is electric and has three options, Bake, Convection, and Broil.
My questions are:
- What mode should I use to sort of replicate the gas oven in the store, just bake? I have a pizza stone.
- Is there a noticeable diffrence in taste between something baked in a gas vs electric oven?
- Would there be a big difference in the cooking time between the gas oven in the store and my electric oven?
Sorry I'm very new to baking so any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
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Hi Giyad,
Many home bakers use electric ovens, and in some sense, they can be better than gas ovens. But it depends what you are trying to bake. For example, if you want to bake rustic loaves, one common approach is to heat the oven with the stone for at least 45 minutes to an hour, then peel the loaf onto the stone while generating steam and bake in Bake mode for about 15 minutes, then remove the steam and switch to Convection for the remainder of the bake. If you are baking pan loaves, you probably do not need the stone and often can do without the steam. If you describe the kind of loaves you are trying to duplicate, a more detailed answer may be possible.
-Brad
Thanks, actually what I'm baking is not loaves its more like pizza. Its called a manousheh, and you bake it in an oven for about 5-10 minutes. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the probelm is that they are coming out too dry...
I'm not familiar with manousheh, but a quick look on google compares them to naan, so you can search the TFL site for that to get some other ideas. They seem to use an enriched dough that includes oil and yogurt. Assuming that you mean the crumb is too dry, you have basically three things to try (short of reworking the dough recipe): Lower the temperature, shorten the baking time, or change the location of the stone (or perhaps some combination of the three). It is possible that your stone is getting too hot. Make sure it is on a shelf rather than on the bottom of the oven, because that could affect the temperature control of the oven. Also, if using convection mode the recipe temperature is usually lowered by about 25˚F.
My limited experience with naan is that the dough is very soft and wet, so if yours seems dry, you may want to reduce the amount of flour a bit, especially if you are using whole wheat, which absorbs more moisture than regular all purpose or bread flour. Hope this helps.
-Brad
Thanks, I guess experimentation is the way to go, should I try putting a pot of water in the oven as well?
Steam is usually used for crusty breads. It allows expansion of the dough during the first few minutes of baking by preventing the crust from hardening. Since this bake is so short, and from what I have seen, the bread is soft, so I wouldn't think it would help much. But try it and let us know.
Thats it! You were right, because of the white whole wheat flour I was using, the dough was not well hydrated. When I used bread flour it turned out perfect, try one out yourself, you'll love it if you can get your hands on some zaatar mixed with olive oil :)
So you're right, it didn't help much. What actually hepled was, I think, leaving the oven to preheat longer. I would usually just wait until the light said it was preheated, but what I did now was leave it on for about an hour before using it. Also, placing the stone a bit higher did seem to help a bit.
What I think is the most important is what you were saying about the hydration of the dough. I think I'm probably over flouring it as well. My dough consists of:
I'm going to try this again with bread flour instead of white whole wheat and see what happens.