Broken Stone - Still Useful
Some years ago, my 16" round baking stone broke into two; I don't remember dropping it but I must have mishandled it in some way. Because I'm a packrat, I saved the two pieces despite buying a new stone.
Sometime during COVID, I tried using baking stones again instead of a Dutch oven. It's easier to bake two loaves on a big stone than to try to wrangle two. big Dutch ovens. Something prompted me to put the broken stone on the top oven rack; it probably helps stabilize the oven temp; I line up the break in the stone right under the oven light so that I can see the loaf baking below, another advantage over the Dutch oven. Oven Set-Up Photos
The two stones plus a steam pan at the bottom of the oven and spritzing the loaves just before loading and again 5 minutes into the bake (compensating for the vented oven) gave me my best oven spring ever.
Moving to today, a few months later, I bought a big new Breville toaster-oven-air fryer to replace our smaller, older one, which was showing some signs of age. The new one accommodates 2 loaf pans (which I snobbishly rarely use except for the sourdough discard brick); the accompanying oven instructions even include a bread book Breville Breads with formulas for loaf pan breads and a caraway rye bread proofed in a banneton.
Just for fun I retrieved the larger part of the broken baking stone; mirabile dictu it fits on the new Breville oven rack. So I may try bread baking in the small oven, perhaps saving some electricity. And of course sourdough discard muffins, since it accommodates a regular muffin pan
Has anyone used one of these for bread baking? any tips? Thanks
Yes, I bake pan breads in mine. I use the two stage bake option. 20 minutes for stage 1 at higher temp with fan on; 25 minutes for stage 2 at lower temp with fan off.
I should add that I usually under proof slightly, spray the top with water and use a cold start.
Thanks for the information. Bread bakers often write that convection baking doesn't work well for bread, as it tends to remove the moisture too quickly. I guess that hasn't been your experience. And the Breville Breads booklet calls for baking rye bread at 350F with convection, one temp all the way through (perhaps for simplicity at some sacrifice to oven spring).
Do you think a 2nd spritz 5 minutes into the bake would help with oven spring for pan loaves? It really seems to help for conventional oven bakes, adding steam to replace the steam that the oven vented. I guess the Breville isn't vented, but I would guess that the fan does dissipate the steam faster.
The bread I was describing wasn't rye, but rather 70% to 80% slightly enriched whole-wheat sandwich bread. I'm not interested in a big oven spring because I want an even textured crumb. I find that slightly underproofing then starting in a cold oven with a spritzed top yields a good rise with the crumb I like. I don't slash the top.
I haven't baked my rye bread in this oven yet, but when I do, I'll use the same process as in the big oven. Mine is a seeded Danish style rye, roughly 85% rye. I bake it in a lidded pullman pan. No oven spring desired. I follow Sune's baking advice on Foodgeek.dk, i.e. 10 minutes at 450 then 80 minutes at 350. I preheat the oven for this one.
There is some debate on this, but the initial 10 minutes at 450 is to disable the amylase enzyme activity and stabilize the crust. I don't know if this is really true, but I've never had a problem with starch attack. I've never made a rye hearth loaf, so I can't speak to the process for this.
I know it's not what you just got, but Anova has a "Precision Oven" toaster-airfryer-convection oven with a steaming capability. Their web page shows a good-looking boule that was obviously baked without a pan - see (scroll down the page)
https://anovaculinary.com/products/anova-precision-oven
Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen reviewed the oven favorably, including that it made excellent toast.
I don't have one. I keep toying with the idea but haven't pulled the string yet.
It looks like a terrific oven. But for that price, I'll just use a spritz bottle for steam. The Breville air fryer, even for ~$200 less seemed like an indulgence. But I justified it to myself thinking of baking a dozen sourdough discard muffins at a time, and air-frying lots of veg.
I know what you mean. I've never used a toaster oven or air fryer so it's hard to know how much we'd use it. Our old toaster just failed, and that raised the question of new toaster vs toaster oven? And if a countertop oven, how big and how expensive?
It's still up in the air so in the meantime we got a cheap toaster.