Hi All,
I have not achieved great results with a traditional baguette (not sourdough) in my home oven. Seems my oven doesn't retain steam very well at all, even for a home oven, and the oven doesn't dry out quickly enough. So I was searching the web for alternative methods and came across this method on breadcetera.com by a member of their forum.
I decided to give it a try because I think this alternative has a lot of promise; I just need to do some more experimenting. The set up is simple: A 600 hotel pan, inverted on to the bread once the loaf is placed in the oven on my stone. Then I use a hand steamer to inject steam into a hole I've drilled in the hotel pan. The logic behind this method is two-fold: 1) By using the steamer, you're starting with steam, not converting water to steam via spraying, and 2) The oven stays dry because the steam is contained in the hotel pan.
My results were good, but not quite there, as you can see in the pic below. I did achieve very good oven rise and good crumb. However, the crust wasn't very crusty and there was some blistering. Also, the color wasn't dark enough for me but I was afraid to keep baking since the loaves were done internally and on the bottom. I tried Chef Jacob's basic baguette formula for the first time for this round, instead of other formulas I've used in the past. My method was to place one baguette on my stone in a 500F oven > cover and inject 6-10 seconds worth of steam > lower oven to 450F > bake for about 8 minutes covered > finish the baking uncovered.
<original image was here and I can't recover it>
Note to all - I'm the original poster of this comment and my images were removed when I cancelled my Flckr account. I'm going back and adding the images back in, but I can't always find the originals. Sorry everyone, I can't recover this image.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to why I didn't achieve a crispy crust?