Loaf 46 – Oven Bake-off Loaves

Posted on Jun 1, 2012 in loaves

The method I have been using to simulate a hearth oven with steam is to use a pizza stone in the oven and put about a cup of water in a broiler pan at the bottom of the oven. Everything is pre-heated to 500° before the dough and water go in.

Dutch oven in oven

Another popular method is to use an inverted Dutch oven. I heard about this in my SFBI class, and a friend has had success with this method, so I wanted to try it out. The process is simple: you pre-heat an inverted Dutch oven (top on the bottom with the pot used as a giant lid) in a 500° oven for quite awhile. The loaf is put into the Dutch oven and the temperature is lowered to 450°. As the bread cooks it releases it’s own steam which remains trapped inside. This allows the bread to pop before the crust hardens. After 20 minutes the top is removed and the bread continues cooking until the crust is a crispy brown.

To be scientific about it, I compared the method I have been using to the Dutch oven method in a side by side (actually top over bottom) bake-off.

I made the standard Reinhart Lean Bread that I’ve become proficient at as a two loaf batch of dough. After the two boules had risen I baked them with the two methods.

Results
The two loaves were very similar. The oven baked loaf got a little bit more oven pop, but it isn’t clear whether this is because of the baking method or because I had to handle the Dutch oven loaf rougher to get it onto the scorching hot lid.

left: Dutch oven; right: Regular oven with steam

Both loaves had nice crusts visually and in crunch and texture – I’d rate them almost identical.

The Dutch oven loaf took six minutes longer – not enough to make a big difference.

There are two reasons I’ll continue to use the oven method I’ve been using over the Dutch oven method:

I can bake two loaves at once in one oven. I have two ovens, so I can do up to four loaves at a time.
Handling the hot Dutch oven scares me! Moving heavy items that are 500° is pretty dangerous, and if you’re not paying 100% attention it would be very easy to touch the wrong thing.