Hello fellow bakers,
I'm fairly new to baking sourdough in a deck oven. As I scroll through posts on the fresh loaf, I found 2 very interesting topics with comments from Jimbtv on Dec 2017 regarding his new deck oven:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54601/new-oven
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54647/jimbtv-new-oven-outrageous-oven-spring
Jim stated that:
- Setting deck to 500 and the top elements to around 450 makes for some pretty impressive oven spring. As the manufacturer states, the heat transfer is forced vertically because of the temperature differential. For the first time in my baking experience I am having concerns about too much oven spring.
- Another way to coax a rapid expansion is to use an oven with a sealed baking chamber and set the top heating elements 25 - 50 degrees cooler than the bottom elements. My new oven offers me that feature and temperature probes and displays from top and bottom locations verify the differential. Placing the proofed loaf on the hot deck will encourage a vertical heat transfer - heat trying to rise to the cooler air above. What I am seeing is a fairly rapid vertical growth of the loaf, more so than I experienced in my gas-fired Blodgett deck oven.
Jim's explanation on his setting also sounds fascinating to me. It also reminds me of a baker on instagram I've been following, Mr. Campbell (https://www.instagram.com/campbell2664/?hl=en). He would preheat his Rofco to 250oC then right after loading and steaming, turn the tempt off/reduce it to 200oC. He states that the baking stones will still retain most of the heat and bake the bread nicely with steam. He said if he keeps the temperature dial as is after loading, the crust will be formed too soon as the tempt spring back. After 20mins, he will raise the tempt to 220-230oC and bake till colour required. He has several videos on such early crust forming on his instagram account.
This is very interesting to me. I usually bake my country SD (15-20%ww, 85-80% bread flour, 75-80% hydration) with usual top at 230oC and bot at 220oC, venting after 20 mins then reduce to 215-210oC. I found anything higher than this would form the crust very early on. The bottom heat also if not reduced to 180oC after the first 20 mins steaming would also burn the crust on the bottom. So I just wonder:
- Has anyone tried similar setting as Jim in their deck oven, meaning setting a clear difference where bot heat is much hotter than top heat for the first 15-20 minutes baking with steams?
- Has anyone baking at that high temperature (260oC-500F) in a deck oven? Isn't that too hot? For me even at full load, the crust will form very early if I set it to anything higher than 230-240oC.
- My plan is to try the same logic, but apply at bot heat of 230oC and top heat at 200-210oC. Let's see how things go.
Sorry, don't have a deck oven, but what some TFL bakers (myself included) have found with their domestic ovens is that if you keep the hydration below 75% you can keep the oven temperature at 240/250C; if you go up to 80% hydration then 250C gives you poor ears and you really need to bake at 210C. As you note, that can be upped once the steam is vented.
Lance
That's also interesting Lance. I do notice when cooking high hydration dough, a too high temperature will always result in water not cooking off properly. What do you think could be the cause of ears not forming properly at 250oC for 80%H dough (say with already proper bulk fermentation and steaming)? I'm curious to learn.
Probably even with steam, with 80% dough the crust is starting to firm up before the expansion creating the ear has a chance to take place.
Maybe that's because the extra moisture in the dough needs more heating time before oven spring starts and also an 80% dough has more spread on the peel and that will take precious early minutes of the early oven time to get to the place where a 75% would be.
Lance