How did Sunrise Flour Mill get started? It was a quest to perfect the great artisan loaves we had in our travels. It took a lot of trial and error and after many (MANY) attempts and years of practice, we now feel we have the secrets to making the best loaf of artisan bread… and here is one of our secrets
Baking in a Dutch Oven.
Professional bakers use steam injected ovens to get those stunning loaves you get in a bakery. Steam in your oven while baking bread is what makes that highly sought after crispy crust.
Some of you might be lucky enough to have a steam oven in your kitchen (consider us envious) However, you likely don't have a steam injected oven in your house. Instead, you likely have a conventional kitchen oven.
Conventional kitchen ovens are designed to pull out moisture and steam and vent them to the outside. Putting a pan of ice cubes or spraying the inside of the home oven creates steam that just disappears..
There are lots of tricks to try to replicate those professional steam injected ovens and believe me, we have tried them all. But the best way is to use a Dutch oven.
If you haven't yet, try making bread in a Dutch oven. When you put your bread dough in a preheated Dutch oven, it is a perfect little baking chamber. The moisture from your bread dough turns to steam, the steam gets trapped inside the Dutch oven creating a humid environment for baking your bread. Without this trapped steam, your crust would set right away and your bread wouldn't be able to expand as successfully.
A Dutch oven is the answer. We love our cast iron ones, but others work well, too, including ceramic and clay bakers. Members of our Baking With Heritage Grains Facebook group have all sorts of ideas for baking vessels.
A Dutch oven was the key to what we were looking for - a crisp crust and soft inside.
All for now,
