"Randall Nortman" > wrote in message
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
I did something similar, only no pressure cooker, I just used a tea kettle
with a cork -- cork had a hole drilled into it which fit the copper tube.
Tube fed down the vent from the stove top into the back of the oven. Didn't
have any problems with corrosion, but I didn't do that many loaves of bread
either. I just left the tube in place (with the cork on the stovetop end)
when not in use. Had to remove the tube when selling the house.
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