Baking Stone Placement ... and How Many to Use?
I have three baking stones that I picked up over the years. Two are round, thin pizza stones. One is an old Pampered Chef rectangular flat baking stone. It is thicker than the pizza stones, but not by much. It is my primary baking stone. I have used it for decades.
Right now, I place the rectangular baking stone on the middle rack and bake on it. I also put a round pizza stone on the top rack. The idea is that it would radiate heat down on the bread more like an actual brick oven. Honestly, I do not know whether it works or whether it might interfere with the air flow or other heat sources in the oven. It is what I have been doing for a while. In case it matters, we currently use a GE/Monogram electric oven. I bake bread on ordinary Bake, not Convection, but wonder about that, too.
I put the stones on the right side of the shelves, with a cast iron pan on the left side of the bottom rack for steam. I assume that the steam rises on the left side of the oven and gets to the bread from the left. For a typical bread bake, I would run the oven at 500 F (260 C) for 45 minutes to preheat the oven and stones, then turn it down to baking temperature before baking the dough.
I know that there are better, thicker baking stones and baking steels on the market, but for now I want to learn to work with what I have on hand.
All of the thinking behind these uses and placements are my own ideas. They seem to make sense to me, but I could be totally wrong and would appreciate your advice about:
- How many baking stones do you use?
- Is an extra baking stone above the loaf a good idea?
- Where do you place the stone or stones?
- Do you bake on Bake or Convection?
- If your answer is "both", then how do you decide which to use?
- What additional baking stone ideas, advice, and suggestions can you share with a beginner?
- How do you arrange baking stones, steam pans, etc.?
Hi!
I do not have any useful advice, so I can only share my experience with it. My oven is electric, LG brand.
I have several: a baking stone and baking steel(s). I very rarely use them, for I learned to bake great hearth breads without them, basically, in my eyes they are useful only for pizzas or extra long baguettes and extra long loaves of non-French hearth breads.
No, an extra baking stone above the loaf is not a good idea. It takes more energy to preheat and it does not work. Well, not in my oven.
I place mine in the lower third portion of the oven or on the bottom shelf, sometimes on the bottom/floor of the oven (my oven's lower heating element is hidden). Even for pizzas, because I use convection setting, they brown on top just fine. I preheat mine to 200C/400F, the very minimum necessary for hearth breads, very rarely to 220C/440F. Never to 500F, not even for pizzas. It might be necessary to preheat the hearth/stone up to 550-600F for certain purely rye hearth breads, but I avoid that energy expense by baking them in loaf pans.
I usually bake on convection setting. I do not really use Bake setting. If I want to bake w/o convection for a while, let's say to not disperse the steam, or to bake without overbrowning the crust, I simply turn my oven off for a few min to continue baking using residual heat.
The best advice for those who steam their breads baked on the stone is from Debra Winks, here
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16036/good-bad-and-enlightenment#comment-112898
She talks about cooling effect of steam and how to avoid it. I steam my breads differently, usually, by baking them under cover, but hers is a very good advice.
Best wishes,
m.