<large snip>

>Peter Reinhart recommends pre-heating the cloche base and top too. Despite
>my immense respect for his contributions to the bread world, I thought I'd
>give cold starts a trial. Just pure dumb luck I suppose. And in fact... to
>repeat myself, a cold start works great with cloches. But it does go against
>the grain of accepted practice. Most experienced bakers think you're nuts
>for suggesting it. Commercial practice is a strong influence.

Correct. Adapting a commercial bakery's operation to cold start would, I
suspect, be a little mischancy. But there is an attitude, prevalent amongst the
members of any profession, which says "If we don't do it, it can't possibly
work."

I collaborated with Ed Okie on developing cold starts for Reinhart's Pain a
l'Ancienne and had considerable success BUT I was using a fan oven with a 10
minute, room temperature to 250C, heating time.

My current oven, crude, gas, no fan, cheap (which is why we've got it, cash is
short at the moment) and heats to 300C so it's great for hot starts but the
heat time to 250C is over 20 minutes. And the hot air flow from the burners
at the back burns the top of the bread.

Ed was weary of the usual, "Cold start? For Bread? I wish I had some of what
you've been smoking!" reaction as I became, in time.

John