Applying learnings of ciabatta to baguettes
Recently I have been making fine adjustments to my oven to max out the rise of my loaves and mentioned in a post that I wasnt seeing the full rise across the length of the loaves. Having done a few ciabattas in the new CM right after cooking a few pizzas at 650F I remembered a steam comment by idaveindy regarding super heated steam. So this time while preheating I decided to go for some higher temps and this time broke my cardinal rule of never using ice / cold water. I think in the past when bumped temps, the steam teay was producing steam that was too hot and cooking the crust too early. So this time I pushed the temo to just under 500F and poured an ounce of very cold water into the steamer. I got a very satisfying rise as can be seen in the pic. the loaf on its side shows even rise from end to end. Kind of amazing really how many factors matter. Main thing is the new oven is becoming more enjoyable with each bake :)