October 1, 2014 - 3:50pm
New oven, need advice
Tomorrow I will be baking high hydration hearth bread in a Roto-Flex pizza oven. Most of the decks are steel, and I have never baked on steel.
My bread is about 90% hydration. I need advice on temperature and hearth temperature. I usually bake in my wood fired oven at 500 degrees. I also baked in a Bakers Pride deck oven at about 500 degrees.
Should I use a lower temp, like 475 or 450 since I believe steel transfers heat better than tile?
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Michael, I would use the same temp, but consider transferring the dough to a pizza screen or parchment paper midway through the bake. The steel will definitely transfer the heat to the bottom of the dough much quicker than tile ( which is why some like to use a steel for pizza ) but that should not effect anything other than the very bottom of the loaf. Nice oven by the way - post some photos of your bake.
I set up a cool steaming rig in there and run it at 450 for bread. It's a gas oven and I've had some pretty good success with it at those temps. I don't know how to attach pics here, but look up "duluth's best bread" on google images for some of my bakes.