Steamy Bread Baking Tip
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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3 Comments:
A morsel of alarmist outdoor lore, in case it's applicable here: People building campfires are usually advised to make sure that rocks that will be exposed to high heat (such as around the fire) are dry through and through. The reason is that water that has seeped or soaked in can expand when heated, causing the rock to explode. In other words, you'll cause no explosions by pouring the water OVER hot rocks, but you may want to be sure they were fully dried out in the first place, before heating them in the oven.
Barry Foy at 7:20PM on 03/16/08
Also, be very careful when opening a steamed up oven.
srhcb at 8:41PM on 03/16/08
Now I'm paranoid, Barry--checking the surface would be a no-brainer, but how can you make sure the inside of a rock is fully dry? It's one thing if they're "oven rocks" from a controlled environment (your kitchen pantry), but what about when camping?
OneWallKitchen at 11:24AM on 03/17/08