Getting the most from your Pizza Stone Pizza Stone Baking Discuss Getting the most from your Pizza Stone in the Brick Oven Cooking forums; S, There are posts here about steam and good baking in a WFO, so I suggest you do a search. ...

[CanuckJim]

S,

There are posts here about steam and good baking in a WFO, so I suggest you do a search. Also, consult the bread baking eBook for a discussion of methods and benefits. Without steam, you will not get maximum oven spring for bread, because the steam keeps the surface of the dough moist long enough for it to occur. Generally speaking, steam should be vented half way through the bake time so the crust can firm up and crisp.

Jim

[Dutchoven]

Oh definitely spray into the oven. There are several threads on this topic if you look around. Most of us use a garden sprayer/mister and there will not be an issue with spraying water on the bricks, as the superheated air in the oven steams it immediately. The brick oven can be steamed before the loading and right at loading.
Best
Dutch

[swripley]

Jim and Dutch,

Thanks, I will search for the posts on steam and bread baking. I've been spending so much time on the oven, I haven't really taken any time to read up on everything I can do with it once I am done. I downloaded both eCookBooks and haven't even looked at them since. So much to learn!

S

[Wlodek]

Not spraying, but I tried a steam pan with my bread batch last night and it worked wonders! Fantastic crisp crust, different colour. It really made a difference.

W.
(chewing a bit of crust)

[blogan]

When I bake bread in a home oven on a pizza stone
I baste the bread with water before it goes into the oven
and I then throw 1/2 cup of water directly onto the oven floor
when the bread is first loaded

In the wood fired mud oven there is an old cast iron pot
filled with nuts and bolts, nails and pieces of rebar
which remains in the oven during firing
just after the bread is loaded
1/2 cup water is poured into this pot
the water creates a steam cloud
(be careful)
and the results are similar to a steam injected oven

[Burntroof ofmouth]

Does the amount of water make a difference, in over as per pan idea or spraying stone better

[Wiley]

By no means am I as experienced as many here in relation to making bread. However, it is easy to see that a pan of water (hot or boiling) will produce steam which in the environment of a WFO very quickly becomes superheated steam. The direct application of water to the hearth or dome would most likely result in superheated steam more quickly in the baking environment, however, the pan idea might make for a longer duration of the superheated steam as some is bound to escape.

I think this is where knowing one's WFO and experience is very important. Baking bread is more in the category perhaps of an "Art" than a "Science". How much steam is "right" for a given bread, at a given time is one of alot of variables.

Wiley

[sunday]

hi

i'm going to be building an outdoor pizza oven this spring
but for now while practicing to bake, i will use a pizza stone

[Wiley]

Sunday, I might be so bold as to suggest you find a copy of Richard Bertinet's book "Crust" (at the library or buy if you are into building a 'baking library"). The book comes with a DVD inside the front cover. While I find the method he uses to knead dough quite different, in his DVD he goes thru making dough for one of his classic round loaves (also several other receipes) including baking it in a more conventional oven using two pizza stones. On the DVD one can see how much water he sprays into his oven before and during the baking of that loaf as well as the finished product. Informative in a visual rather than a series of still photos and written description of the typical cookbook.

Beyond that I find the whole aspect of right quanity of steam for a proper bake most interesting. If one compares the amount of water (and hence steam generated from that water) Bertinet sprays into his oven with that involved in the New York Times video on no knead bread, one can see a huge variance. Just in case you haven't seen the New York Times video here's a link to the same article with a different heading:

YouTube - EASY Crusty Bread Making

Wiley