http://www.cookingwithcrack.com/bread/steam/


isabella


"Randall Nortman" > schreef in bericht
ink.net...
> On 2006-01-19, Bob (this one) > wrote:
> > Randall Nortman wrote:
> >> On 2006-01-18, Bob (this one) > wrote:
> >>
> >>>Who subscribes to rec.food.baking? Are you a professional? Are you a
guy
> >>>who likes to bake on weekends? Are you a mother who needs to bake for a
> >>>family? Hobby? Work? Hate it but have to? Love it but not enough time?
> >>>
> >>>Who are you? What kinds of information are you seeking?
> >>
> >>
> >> "Serious amateur" cook and baker (except I don't take the "serious"
> >> part too seriously). W.r.t. baking, it is mostly bread, mostly
> >> whole-grain, mostly sourdough, though occasionally I use a little
> >> white flour and/or some yeast. I have my own grain mill and bake with
> >> various grains. I built a steam injection system for my home oven
> >> (which I'm am currently in the process of upgrading by replacing
> >> copper tubing with stainless steel and silicone).
> >
> > I'd be interested in hearing more about this. What kind of oven? How
> > does your injections system work? Hardware?
> [...]
>
> The oven is a very cheap, low-end electric GE model, about 25 years
> old. I got the idea from newsgroups -- search for "pressure cooker
> steam injection" on Google groups, in this group plus
> alt.bread.recipes, rec.food.sourdough, and rec.food.equipment (I
> forget where I saw it). The idea is that you boil water on the
> stovetop in a pressure cooker, and direct the steam into the oven via
> heat-resistant tubing of some sort. You need to tap a pipe fitting
> into the pressure cooker lid and find a way into the oven -- all
> residential ovens are vented in some way, and that's the first place
> to look. In my case, the vent is underneath one of the back burners.
> It's a tight squeeze, but I managed to route some copper tubing
> through there and into the oven. My current problem is that copper
> tubing is actually only rated for up to 400F -- it doesn't melt when
> it gets hotter, but the end that goes into the oven is getting quite
> corroded now. I am going to replace it with a short length of
> stainless steel tubing (expensive, but takes high heat and doesn't
> corrode) for the part that's actually in the oven, and then use a
> length of high-temp silicone (food-safe, plasticizer-free, rated up to
> 500F) to connect the boiler to the stainless tubing. The stainless
> steel will then stay in my oven all the time, even when I'm not doing
> bread, which will be much more convenient than my current system,
> which involves installing and removing the copper tubing every time I
> bake bread. When I finish this project, perhaps I'll post pictures
> and details.
>
> The final results depend on the strength of the stovetop burners. My
> stovetop is cheap electric, and can't boil water as fast as I'd like.
> I don't get the intense burst of steam that you'd get in a commercial
> combi oven, but I do get much more than tricks like setting a pan of
> water in the oven. I can keep the steam going as long as I'd like
> (usually 10-15 minutes, until oven spring is totally done), and it
> does get plenty steamy in there -- I can see steam rising from the
> gaps in the oven door seal (remember, this is a cheap 25-year old
> oven) almost immediately after I close the door, and I definitely need
> to stand back for a moment when I open the door with the steam on.
> The bread also cooks faster, presumably because wet air transfers heat
> to the dough more quickly than dry air, or maybe because the air
> movement created by the jet of steam coming out of the end of the pipe
> turns my oven into a pseudo-convection oven.
>
> Please note that all of the above is potentially dangerous and will
> void any warranties within 100 yards. I'm not advising anybody to do
> it.
>
> When I have a chance to build or renovate a new kitchen, I've got my
> eye on the Gaggenau residential combi oven. Expensive, but much
> better than this mad scientist contraption I've currently got going.
> I think KitchenAid just came out with one as well.
>
> --
> Randall