advice for new oven with steam bake
Hi there,
We finally got a new oven after several months of baking in my countertop oven. Our new oven has a steam bake setting where you fill a tray with water. I was thinking of baking my bread with that feature instead of with my usual DO method. Does anyone have experience with an oven with steam bake? It's not a true steam oven I suppose. All my formulas are for the DO method. So would I follow the same temperature profile ? My guess is because the heat is more direct , the temperature should be lowered?
The second question I have is, after my loaf cooled yesterday, the top layer of the crust cracked. That was the first loaf I had baked in a DO in my new oven. One thing I did that I normally don't is I followed the instructions in the recipe which was to remove the loaf from the DO and bake directly in the oven for the last 10 min. Could that have caused the cracking?
Another thing about my new oven is, I had to fiddle with the temperature alot to get it up to 450. I had 2 oven thermometers in there and had to bring the temp up to almost 500 before it would register 450 on the thermometers. Later I tried to calibrate the oven but could only do so by 30 degrees at the most. Would that be a good reason to call for service?
Thank you so much
Been using the steam function on my new oven for several months. Haven’t used DO method in several years so not sure I can compare but I really like the steam feature. Convection is turned on by default with the steam feature. I use the same temps I used in my old non-convection oven, generally 400-450 dF for plain, unenriched doughs. I also do all my baking on a stone which gets pre-heated. You can set up multiple timed bursts but I tend to use a single manual burst immediately after I load loaves in. Seems like a burst keeps steam in the oven for several minutes. If I am rotating my loaves after 10 minutes as I do for baguettes or epis, my glasses get fairly well fogged.
Been using the steam function on my new oven for several months. Haven’t used DO method in several years so not sure I can compare but I really like the steam feature. Convection is turned on by default with the steam feature. I use the same temps I used in my old non-convection oven, generally 400-450 dF for plain, unenriched doughs. I also do all my baking on a stone which gets pre-heated. You can set up multiple timed bursts but I tend to use a single manual burst immediately after I load loaves in. Seems like a burst keeps steam in the oven for several minutes. If I am rotating my loaves after 10 minutes as I do for baguettes or epis, my glasses get fairly well fogged.