Steam and ears. An epiphony

For a long time I have been trying to get good oven spring and good ears in my loaves.

I have tried all sorts of things, concentrating mainly on developing strength of the dough, adding steam to the oven and slashing correctly.

Results have been disappointing until recently.

I posted a while back showing two loaves made from the very same batch, strengthened and proved in exactly the same way. But I cooked one in a dutch oven and the other right next to it on same shelf.

The results were eye opening. The one cooked in the dutch oven sprung with fantastic ears. The one next to it developed no ears at all.

This helped me to understand that it wasn’t the strength of the dough, the time I gave it to ferment, the way I slashed or any of the myriad other variables that was the problem. 

It was simply the amount of steam in the bake.

This frustrated me because both my ovens have steam settings which I have been tinkering with. But the outcomes were never satisfactory.

After more tinkering I have discovered some interesting things.

Injecting steam into the oven is a good thing but what’s more important is keeping it there. So if your oven has good ventilation, it’s quite likely you won’t be able to generate enough steam to give the moisture necessary for good spring.

Luckily, one of my ovens has a setting called ‘moist fan baking’. Moist fan baking shuts off the vent in a supposed effort to make the bake more economical. But for me, it’s a sure fire way to keep steam in the oven. 

Whilst the results aren’t quite as dramatic as the oven spring from a dutch oven, they are a significant improvement from bread baked in exactly the same oven but with the vent open.

If you’re wondering why I don’t simply use a Dutch oven all the time, for me it’s simple. They are cumbersome, require asbestos oven gloves and take up so much space in the oven you can only bake one loaf at a time. Whereas with a decent stone, I can bake three loaves on that stone, thereby reducing oven use by two thirds.

The loaves pictured below were baked for 10 mins at the highest steam setting (3) at 130 which is the highest it will go (It’s a setting normally reserved for custards etc). This setting still vents the steam though. I then switched to moist fan baking for 25 mins where I’m able to whack up the heat to 230. 

Next batch I will try Moist fan baking for the whole bake but use the boiling tray of water at the bottom for the steam creation. I won’t be able to create steam via the oven because I’m not on a steam setting, I'm on Moist fan baking. Very frustrating!

So my conclusions thus far after many years of obsessing about spring and ears is this. For sure, take care of your surface tension, your ferment time, your slashing. But none of this will mean anything unless you’ve got a reasonable way of trapping steam around the loaf. All ovens are different and if yours vents well, you will still bake nice bread but it really won’t spring or get ears. Well mine certainly don’t anyway!

Spraying the loaves as they go into the oven also helps.

I believe starting on a lower oven temp also helps (130-150) but I still need to experiment on that.

Or you could just forego the pretty risen loaves altogether and do a focaccia instead! No ears needed, comes out great every time. 

Any alternative/extra thoughts gratefully received btw. I’m no expert but years of failure have led me these conclusions and I wanted to share. Cheers.