BONUS TIP: Creating steam in your oven Copy

Steam ensures that your bread can rise a little further even while baking. You can create steam in your oven in many different ways. I suggest you use whatever you already have at home – you don’t have to run to the store to buy fancy “gadgets” and tools.

Make sure that all the surfaces and tools that your bread will come into contact with in the oven are hot. Personally, I always preheat everything along with my oven.

1) Place a shallow baking tray on the bottom rack of your oven. When you place your bread onto the big (and also preheated) baking tray in the middle of your oven, pour around 2dl of water into the bottom tray. In approximately 15 minutes all the water will have evaporated and you won’t even have to open up the oven to take the water tray out. But if there is still some water in the bottom tray after 15 minutes, remove it.

2) Bake your bread in an oven safe pot with an oven safe lid (a cast iron pot or an enameled pot work great; I personally don’t recommend a glass one). Make sure you preheat this pot and the lid with the oven itself. A cast iron pot should be preheated for at least 45 minutes, while an enameled pot will heat up in time with your oven (when the oven signals that it is warmed up, you are good to go).

When you put your bread into the pot, cover it with a lid. Bake the bread in a covered pot for 15 minutes.

Then uncover the pot and keep baking until the crust reaches the perfect caramelized crunchiness.

3) Place a shallow tray onto the bottom rack of the oven and preheat it with the oven When you put your bread into the oven, throw a few ice cubes onto the lower tray.

Please be very careful when using any of these methods – I’ve burnt myself with steam many times before.

4) Use a built-in steam oven. Personally, I am super happy with my Miele oven and I highly recommend it if you are on the lookout for a new built-in steam oven. In this case I set the oven to 3 bursts of steam in the first 15 minutes. The oven absorbs around 300 ml of water.

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