Go to the Article: On Humidity and Cooking–How and When to Use It.
All this talk of thin crust tender crumb is making me itch for a sourdough boule 🤔
One aspect that I think wasn't explained well was that steam has a much higher heat capacity. It actually bakes faster by convection.
Evaporation of the baked food will actually remove heat.
So I would say, as long as the steam is produced by the oven and not by the baking food, steam will actually help cooking.
I don't know how it plays with browning and crust.
I have an oven from Sharp that forces steam under pressure into the oven for browning. Works well, I often use that mode for breaded cutlets.
I’m struggling with a lot of theory and no application. I know I want steam at first, how do we make it happen? With our breville oven?
the way we hacked this with our Breville ovens was placing a shallow dish of water in the oven while preheating, or adding water to the crumb tray... you can also use a spray bottle and spritz in the oven every so often to get the humidity levels up
That really doesn't work that well. Especially so if a blast of well times steam ( like used making a baguette ) is what is needed. For folks that don't want to invest in a steam oven ( one with a steam lever ) a similar effect can be had cheaply. Obtain a 24 inch ( or so ) long section of 1/16 ( 1.5 mm ) ID stainless steel tubing ( online auction sites have it cheap ) and solder or epoxy a a leur lock syringe hub to one end.
Place a cast iron or SS pan in the lower levels of the oven and put in your food. Trap the tubing in the door as you close it so that one end is aimed at the pan and the hub end is outside of the oven. When ready for steam and after pan is HOT..attach a 20 cc water filled syringe to the hub and inject. A powerful blast of steam will result almost like a French steam fitted deck oven. Steam can be maintained and adjusted by the amount of water injected.
If you need this often you can fit fabricated clamps on the front of the lower oven tray and top inner surface of the oven to permanently mount the tube and maintain its aim. I used such a setup for a few years.
When the food is hot and the interior of the oven is hot as well a blast of steam will brown bread and some meats. Usually done near the beginning in bread and end for meats. Once that is done the steam needs to go.
Does ChefSteps have any classes or discussion boards about cooking / baking in combination steam ovens?
Been seeing toasters that steam showing best toast ever. Can you guys do an autopilot recipe for toasting bread in the Joule Oven? Assume you’d put a baking sheet of water in the bottom? Set it and forget would be dope.
You mention your rational combi oven. I have a contertop version from another vendor and would also like more references and/or recipies outside of pure Breville appliances. Or, hint hint Breville could make one like their competition. For us precision folks that can bake and cook to 1 or 2 degrees can you please add references to both home user and precision equipment. I own the original Joule sous vide, Anova Precision 2.0 and Control Freak commercial.
