That L.A. Times article about chefs blogging led me to the L.2O Blog, which had a great baking hack:
You need steam in the oven chamber to keep the exterior of the dough from prematurely drying and forming a crust before it is fully developed. Hence the pan filled with wet rocks for the conventional oven (pour water over the hot rocks to fill your oven with steam).
Of course, Laurent Gras, the lucky stiff behind L.20 Blog and its eponymous restaurant doesn't need so pedestrian a hack anymore, since he just took delivery on a killer steam-injection oven.
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