Success with new steaming method

Since I use a gas oven, which keeps a temperature but doesn't keep steam, I didn't really have the best oven-spring and crust formation. Recently, Khalid (mebake) recommended a different steaming method that's good with gas ovens and I gave it a couple of attempts and it yielded some nice results.

The first attempt was with one batard using the Ciril Hitz baguette recipe (I just followed the whole thing until the shaping step) and as you can see, I got a very nice crust and the oven spring was delightful.

and the crust shot:

The second attempt was with a formula that I've been trying to work on using barley flour. Since I can't really find rye flour in Egypt, I've looked to the next glutinous thing: barley. This one uses 200 grams of barley and 800 grams of wheat flour. I had 700 ml of water for a 70% hydration, 15 grams of salt and 7 grams of yeast. I used a preferment consisting of 200 grams barley + 200 grams wheat + 400 ml water + 1 gram yeast. This was left to proof overnight and then the rest was added in the morning. After bulk fermentation, I divided the dough into two and shaped them into batards (one of them came out better as you can see =) ).

The crust shot was taken from the loaf on the left (the other one was eaten too quickly)

Any comments are welcome of course :D