How to create steam in wood fire oven?

I was working with a wood fired oven, "my teacher" had us use one of those garden type pressure sprayers (one thaht had never been used for anything but clean water) to spray the dome and back of the oven as we loaded the loaves.

That worked well for us at the time - but I have not done any wood fired baking since and there may be other ideas.

Just wanted to chime in as this seem less elaborate then the setup above...

Here are just a few ways to add steam to your wfo. 

Here are just a few examples.

You can use a spray bottle of water and spray water aiming directly at the walls.  The water evaporates before hitting the walls.

Damp mopping  the floors to clean up the remaining ash, add's some steam..this usually happens before adding your bread..May assist in some pre-steaming of the oven.

Adding a pan with water soaked rolled up towels.

Use a garden hose and with a sprayer attached and spray aiming at the walls.

If there are several loaves of bread in the oven.  Some steam comes from the bread baking.

There are also mechanical ways of adding steam injection into your oven..this is usually done when the oven is being built.

http://www.fornobravo.com  site has information on steaming a wood fired oven.

Sylvia

HI Mantana/ Thaichef

Patrick may need to make a door closure for his WFO as it is usual to pull the fire from the oven and use the residual heat to bake the bread the door can be made from a hard wood, it just needs to be made to fit into the opening and can be just proped to close the opening we usually soak the wood door before using it.

For your steam the same method you employed will work only add enough water to last for the first 5 to 10 minutes. 

Quite often the use of a wfo goes like a few hours of firing followed by pizza baking with some fire still in, followed by 2 or three batches of bread fire out  and richer breads later followed by some slow roasting and the next day even using the very warm chamber for drying fruits etc or failing that even your next load of firewood can be dried ready for the next session.

regards Yozza  

Agreed that he'll have to fashion some form of door to keep the steam and heat in the oven.  I recently added some nomex felt ( http://www.amazon.com/Nomex-Felt-Long-Thick-Wide/dp/B002YXZ1B4/ref=pd_sbs_indust_1 ) that I roll up and shove in the crack between my door and the top of the opening to seal in all the heat.

As to steam generation, I soak a cotton mop head in water and then throw that into the oven.  seems to wick moisture into the air nicely.  I still spray also when adding loaves to the oven.

I would be VERY reluctant to toss ice on a hot hearth, unless you're keen to replace cracked masonry. Too much thermal shock.

Many suggest using a fine mist sprayer -- that's what I do. The water essentially evaporates before it hits the hot bricks. Others use ice in a hot pan -- this keeps the cold ice off the hot bricks. But if your oven is full, and the door is tight, you may not need to steam. Lightly misting the surface of the loaves before loading them seems to do the trick. The loaves provide enough steam after that.

ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA

Hi, 

We are just completing our brick-clad,  wood fired barrel oven and my husband has made a thick wooden door for it. This fits snugly into the opening and he soaks it in water for an hour  before a bake. This creates steam inside the oven. 

Over more than ten years I've tried various and sundry steaming methods in my WFO.  Finally, I settled on the most economical and effective.  I use a common, dedicated garden sprayer with a brass wand.  The only modification made was to add a longer piece of hose so the sprayer sits on the ground while in use.  Such sprayers can be gotten from box stores for something like $10.  The advantage of the wand is that you don't have to stick your arm or hand inside the oven (ouch).

At the high heats generated by a WFO, using boiling water is completely unnecessary, because ambient temp water turns to steam immediately.  Ice in any form is not recommended.  The other methods used for home ovens simply aren't required in a WFO environment.

For a door (which must seal completely to keep the steam in for half the bake), I use a scrap piece of plywood with a handle.  Attached to the oven side is a two inch thick piece of high heat insulation board, attached with screws and washers, that goes under various trade names (SuperIsol being just one, made in Sweden, available in Europe and N Am).  This is a rigid, dense board, unlike the softer variety (K-Fac 19 being just one).  The softer board will degrade over time unless it's incased in metal.  There are castable refractories (Matrilite 18 being just one), but a similar metal case would have to fabricated and then filled with it.  No matter how it's done, the seal is most important.  Another advantage with a door of this type is that once you're finished baking for the day, you can install the door so that the heat is retained far longer than it would be if the oven mouth was left open.

CJ

I used a full size bath towel, wetted thoroughly, then microwaved for 5 minutes.  I put the hot wet towel in the roasting pan and then poured boiling water (approximately 1 qt) over the towel which filled about 1/2 inch on bottom of the roasting pan. After inserting in the oven, I put wet towel around the door, and sealed for 10 minutes before loading oven.  When I opened door to load, waves of hot steam came rolling out of the door.  It was awesome.

Cheers,

Scot in Las Vegas