hello, my home oven has a steam function where I can fill a tray with water and choose weak, medium or strong steam. Does anyone have any experiences with this compared to the method for example with rolled up damp towels and lava rocks?
I have tried it on both strong and medium when baking sourdough batards on a pizza steel, but Im not entirely convinced yet...
I checked the manual for your oven, it is what we call a combi oven. Here is one post http://weightloss-slim.fit/node/61135/combi-ovens-convection-steam-oven%3C/a%3E%C2%A0 I suggest you play with different settings. The Pizza steel is a good idea to get browning, but you will have to experiment with whether you preheat the steel ( I don't ) how long you run a full steam, how long you bake at steam plus top bottom heat, and how long you cook at bottom heat, no steam. So far, i have tried as little at 30 seconds steam only , then 1/2 the time at steam plus dry heat ( mine is convection and don't have the bottom heat option ) and the remaining half at dry heat , no steam. The more steam at the beginning, the greater the oven spring, but too much , and i find that the loaf does not dry and brown properly. You might start at 25% of the time full steam plus dry heat, then the remaining 75% with just dry heat, and go from there. Since I can only run convection, I run it with steam a little longer since the convection fan dries it out faster than bottom heat.