Oven Spring and Oven Issues
Greetings!
I have been baking sourdough breads for a few months now, and have been trying to troubleshoot issues with my bread...
I currently bake in an electric oven with a roasting pan of hot soaked towels, a cast iron skillet filled with rocks/ice, and a baking steel. I have the oven preheating at 500 F for 1.5 hours in just the Bake setting. I get really great oven spring after the first 20 minutes of steaming, but as soon as I switch to Convection Bake at 450 F without steam for the remainder of the bake, my bread seems to collapse a bit, and it has a noticeable flatter part on the "back" of the bread that faces the fans. It has been really, really disappointing.
Prior to this, I was steaming for the first 20 minutes at 500 F, then continued to use the Bake setting for the remainder of the bake without steam. Unfortunately, a few hours after removing the bread from the oven, the crust lost its crispiness. So I tried the above convection bake method after reading several posts on TFL.
I really thought the bake and convection bake was my solution! My crust stays crispy all day, but after several notes/pictures, I realized that the oven spring is lacking especially when it gets really high right before I remove the steam and switch to convection mode.
Any assistance and information would be greatly appreciated to help troubleshoot my oven spring/oven issues!
With appreciation,
Michelle