Pizza Oven Bread Baking Temperature

There is a trade-off when baking bread between higher temperature baking, which gives you a lighter, crisper crust, and more moderate (lower) baking temperatures, which give your bread a thicker and denser crust. Of course not all breads are the same, and a sourdough miche typically sports a thicker, chewier crust, why traditional light, yeasted breads, such as baguettes and ciabatta’s, have the thinnest and crunchiest of crusts.

But I think you can take this too far. In my impatience to bake (and often real-world time constraints), combined with a slight (and totally unwarranted) bit of nerves that my oven will cool down too fast to where my bread won’t bake — I have been baking my light breads at temperatures ranging from the high 500F’s into the low 600F’s. Which means that my bread is baking very quickly. Sometimes as quick as 10 minutes. And the balance between the crust and the crumb is OK, with the inside of the loaf reaching 200F-210F while the outside is a warm brown.

Still, I think the crust on my loaves might be too thin and too light. Next step — I am going to make a conscious effort to give my pizza oven time to fall into the low to mid 500Fs before I load my bread. I know that the oven will retain enough heat for a very solid bake, so now all I need is the convictions and patience to actually do it.