If you like your crusts .... don't forget your steam!

I was taught to toss a handfull of ice cubes into the oven when putting my Italian style breads in there to create steam. Is this what you do, or is there another method?

I am very proud of my method

I use one of those ridged cast iron steak griddles. It's left permanently in the bottom of the oven. Let it get really hot. Bread in first. Quarter of a cup of water onto griddle door slammed shut. Just 5 minutes or so. Bread out and let water evaporate out of oven and reheat. After around 10!minutes bread back in for rest of bake time. Lovely crisp crust.

I will have to remember that!

I use my pizza stone in my oven, hot, to help with the initial spring, it does a good job. Been using sourdough - rye and wheat starters for a year or so. Its great to see so many people on FT with an interest. Since I have used sourdough, my stomach is much more settled, another plus. Have used "the Fresh Loaf" http://www.thefreshloaf.com/ for a long time for a super source of advice. Plus Dan Lepard's "The Handmade Loaf" - a great book for all keen people. His section on kneading teaches ver little actual kneading but lots of resting periods - he has a good website too.

I've been trying to steam for years. I have a semi-professional gas oven (Dynasty now Jade) which heats from the bottom with burner on the outside. Placing a tin of boiling water on the bottom of the oven, I can never get the water to boil and steam even with a hot oven.

I spoke to a French cuisinier (not a boulanger the other day and he has been experimenting with no knead dough. He places a wet dough (80% weight in water) into a pre-heated dutch oven which he then covers and bakes for 1/2 hr before removing the lid (can't remember if he tips out the loaf too) and bakes it for another 1/2 hr. He says the crust is perfect this way (using high-gluten Canadian wheat which he mills himself).

I must admit to not being too convinced about not kneading for non-soda bread. That won't give usable stretched gluten and it just seems odd. And the higher the hydration rate the more benefit there is from working the dough imho.

The dutch oven method is discussed on some of the bread sites - it normally involves throwing some water in - the idea being that the dutch oven just provides less of a volume for you to trap steam ie more intense steam per cubuc centimetre of oven. It shouldn't be necessary to go to that palaver and trying to boil water in the oven seems pointless.

75 - 80% hydration is what I always use for any French style breads and many others particularly when using a poolish starter. In other words a 100/100 poolish added to a 100/50 mix the following day gives 75% - so it's an easy ritual to remember and get into just making the whole mass bigger or smaller depending on how many baguettes I want that day.

That's why you may want to try the iron griddle method I suggested. I struggled with all of the methods I read about and found them all to have their defects. The steak iron griddle was one of those middle of the night ideas. The iron produces intense heat and the griddle ridges produces lots of surface. It also has the advantage that the griddle sits permanently on the base of the oven and you don't need to find storage for dutch ovens. I'm suprised I haven't read anyone else thinking of it.

With that method the griddle gets very hot and you put the bread in then throw a small amount of water on the griddle ridges and that produces so much instant steam it is sometimes hard to close the oven door. The art is a relatively small amount of water and just for 5 to 10 minutes. Too much water or for too long tends to just produce a thick chewy crust. I also place the loaves on semolina and then on the perforated baguette trays or sheets. A controlled initial burst of intense steam sort of injects the bread surface - followed by a dry hot oven produces crispness. I do all my baguettes this way and always also give them a spray of water before putting them in the oven.

Steam -

It's been ages since I've done it, but if you heat up something that can get pretty hot, like a cast iron pan, and put a aluminum pie plate full above if, and if the pie plate has a pinhole or two over the cast iron pan, it will drip water in slowly which will instantly turn to steam. It's much better than trying to get a pan of water hot enough, which just never seems to happen. Not enough steam, poke a few more holes in it.

Bakery -

It was actually when a really good bakery moved into the area that inspired me to start baking bread again. Our schedule doesn't always get us there when they are open, and even then sometimes stuff is right out of the oven, sometimes not. At home, well it's always hot out of the oven if that's how you want it.

My better half bakes irish soda bread, muffins and fruit cake regularly. She'd do it more often but afraid I'll gain too much weight munching away

I love bread!

Your first post. So inspired and well informed!

Welcome to FT ... and this thread ... now tell us about your brad festish.

I have a pizza stone (which I usually keep in the oven even when not making pizza... thermal mass, y'know...), and I"m wondering about soaking it for breadmaking... any thoughts?

No liquid anywhere near your stone! Why?

Your bread would steam, which I doubt you would want. However, I doubt if the stone would hold or absorb water, apart from a general wetting. As someone else mentioned - iron griddle type thing or a few ice cubes on the oven base and maybe a spray.

I make bread all the time - And just bought Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery Cookbook. Worth every penny and has the measurements all in weights.

Brioche, baguettes, plain white Pullman loaves. I make them all.

And I do my own pizza dough. Make up a triple batch, slow rise it, divide it and freeze. Pizza for a month. I use the Joy of Cooking recipe.

Never had a bread machine, but love my KitchenAid stand mixer.