I love the idea of warm home-baked bread in the middle of winter. But my problem has always been getting the dough to rise when the house is fairly cold. Usually I’d turn the oven on low to warm it up, then shut the oven off when I put the dough in. This would typically result in the bread getting a partially-cooked skin, then failing to rise as the oven went cold again. Not terribly effective.
But I was recently inspired to try baking bread again, partly because I accidentally bought 5 pounds of bread flour instead of regular flour, and partly because I read an article in one of E’s cooking magazines about a different technique to get bread dough to rise. You boil a pot of water on the stove, and then when you put the dough into the oven, you put the pot of boiling water (without a lid) into the oven with it. The warm steam fills the oven and helps the bread rise.
I was a little skeptical, but figured it was worth a try. And wow, did it work! That dough puffed up more and faster than any bread I have ever baked before! It was truly amazing. I reboiled the water while I kneaded the dough after the first rise, and the second rise was just as phenomenal as the first. The bread turned out beautifully.
Two tips worth noting: first, to help keep the steam in even better, I used the pot lid to cover the vent of the oven. (My oven vents out through one of the stove burners.) Second, the warm steam was highly effective at softening up random encrusted spooge inside the oven. Steam condensing on the ceiling of the oven eventually led to droplets of wet spooge dripping down onto the bread pans below. It’s a very good thing I had covered the bread loosely with plastic wrap, and not the clean dish towel I typically use.
Those of you who are frequent bread bakers were probably already aware of this technique, as I see many mentions of it now that I look around the internet. But for any of you who are infrequent bread bakers and haven’t tried it before, I highly recommend it. And now, I’m off to check my ingredient supplies, because E has put in a request for challah.
I … have never used spooge to describe oven gunk. However, I will try this the next time I make bread, and I will also buy bread flour because I never knew such a thing existed. Perhaps that explains why my bread never rises unless it was a pre-packaged dough.
That is, I will try the steaming method, not describing oven gunk as spooge.
Thanks for the tip! I love baking. I made a challah once, and it was delicious. Let us know how yours turns out!! By the way, you can use the challah to make the amazing Raspberry cream cheese stuffed french toast I made for K on Christmas morning, Challah makes an amazing french toast because of its sweetness!