KK as Steam Oven for Bread

[MacKenzie]

Thanks, Bruce. 

[BalconySmoken]

That is so good - I need to try that. Just need to work out where to buy some chain in Singapore 

[MacKenzie]

Maybe you could find the aluminium disc instead. It is easy to handle.

[Pequod]

On 9/24/2019 at 9:36 PM, Syzygies said:

Wow, how timely to find this thread active. I also have news to report.

I got tired of cleaning yard schmutz out of my stainless steel chains, so I ordered a second aluminum disk off eBay. My steam generator now consists of one cake pan and two disks, all aluminum:

Fat Daddio's PRD-163 Round Cake Pan, 16 x 3 Inch, Silver

1 Aluminum Disc, 1 1/4" thick x 14 3/4" dia., Mic-6 Cast Tooling Plate, Disk

To my surprise redoing my calculations, aluminum has a significantly higher specific heat capacity than steel: Water, 4181. Aluminum, 897. Ratio: 21.5%

Moreover, these disks are heavy. The cake pan and two disks combine to 44.9 pounds.

So, in a ceramic cooker or oven heated to 450 F, this steam source can boil off 803 grams of ice, or 964 grams of warm (40 C) water. I rarely use more than half that, enough steam to replace the air in a KK or oven several times over. Perhaps I should have just tossed the steel chain, but now I have two aluminum disks. Nice.

As for the no-knead discussion, is there any connection between no-knead recipes and cast iron enclosures? Or are we all playing Simon Says? Are the authors assuming no one is crazy enough to generate steam as Thomas Keller advises? A cast iron enclosure, and a steam generator, both work. They work differently. If no-knead bread is wedded to a cast iron enclosure for some technical reason, I'm all ears. I'm not seeing it. I've tried both ways with my bread (derived from Tartine Bakery which is a nuanced version of no-knead), and steam is better. What pushed me to experiment was a desire to pick my shape and make multiple loaves at once, not to be forced into the shape of the cast iron enclosure.

Finally getting around to looking at the aluminum disk thingy, but that link has aged out. Anyone have a current link to a source?

[jonj]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Aluminum-Disc-1-1-4-thick-x-14-3-4-dia-Mic-6-Cast-Tooling-Plate-Disk/110859756052?hash=item19cfc1a214:g:RsEAAMXQO21Ry0af

 

[tekobo]

I remember smiling when you said you were happy to be ditching your pile of chain @Pequod.  Mainly because @Syzygies turned us on to this aluminium disc innovation before I got around to buying any chain.  This is definitely a fun and consistent way to create steam in a KK and is one of the reasons that I am looking to buy a 32.  It is a lot more fiddly, trying to get the ice in when you have to have the aluminium assembly directly under your grate with the bread on.  I am hoping to be able to offset the two in the 32.  One thing not to do - don't place the aluminium pan on the bars of your fire basket.  You melt through the pan eventually.  Don't ask me how I know that. 🙄

[Syzygies]

20 hours ago, tekobo said:

Mainly because @Syzygies turned us on to this aluminium disc innovation before I got around to buying any chain.

Doing something in a home oven isn't original to Thomas Keller, but his Bouchon Bakery cookbook brought the idea renewed attention. He recommended chains and stones. What he gets right is that scale matters. The steam from 350g of water will displace the air in an oven or a KK several times over, scalding the cold dough with a great transfer of heat energy. 10g from a plant spritzer is just genuflecting. Baking inside a Dutch oven is different.

Stones, really? They would probably work. They wouldn't explode all that often, right? Not for me. Anyone who sells $400 restaurant meals is an illusionist. There's a romance to cooking with stone. But still...

While I prefer home cookbooks by cooks with serious professional chops, I've come to always view their home equipment recommendations with extreme suspicion. Paul Bertolli may have gotten us started grinding flour for everything, but his equipment recommendations and handling instructions made no sense. He was clearly getting recently ground artisan grains delivered to the restaurant. Professional cooks are too busy to cook at home. I have this image of the Bouchon Bakery trying a pan full of stones once, for the book. They've got to have the correct professional gear, at the bakery, and that's where they bake.

The aluminum disks came about by chance. I'd discovered them on eBay. Someone is getting paid to cut holes, and they're selling the holes, got to love the business model. I wanted additional thermal mass under my Baking Steel for use as a griddle or a pizza stone, and of course I over-spec'd the problem. My baking steel was already so thick that it hardly needed the help, and the aluminum disk was too thick to easily toss about. So I stored the aluminum disk in my cast iron griddle for steam generation, under the chains. It just barely fit, and with differential expansion it shattered the cast iron griddle. Cast iron rusts, in any case, so I replaced it with a commercial cake pan. I ordered a second aluminum disk so I could also ditch the chains. Then I redid the physics, coming to the happy conclusion that one aluminum disk was sufficient.

Can't leave well enough alone. That's why Dennis is one of my idols. I've also been trying to improve my Spanish by reading Cien años de soledad in the original. The first chapter concerns the exploits of José Arcadio Buendía in the long-ago Colombian village that he founded, as he obsesses over invention after invention that he buys from traveling gypsies. My ancestor founded Concord, Massachusetts, so I read this novel as a dream version of my family history if my family had been crazier. Gabriel García Márquez appears to be having great fun with the guy, but his response isn't exactly ridicule. Neither is mine. The absurdity of it all is uncomfortably close to home.

(My brother is a speech pathologist, amateur linguist who's been helping me design computer tools for language study. We want the magic bracelet where one can just understand as one reads and listens. There are version of this that are practical in software. We believe that standard tools don't work that well.)

Edited July 7, 2020 by Syzygies

[jonj]

There are so many great turns of phrase in Syzygies' post, I just had to read it twice. Seriously fun!

[SilverSuzieQue]

Has anyone here cooked bread on the walls like traditional Georgian bread? My husband loved it when he was there on assignment and I can’t find techniques or recipes. Any thought or suggestions would be helpful?!

[tony b]

While folks here have done Naan in their KK, I don't know of anyone who's plastered it against the walls. The pizza stone is a better bet for not loosing a chunk of bread to the fire. 

[Basher]

I’m with tony here silversuzie........however..... always happy for you to show us the way this can be done.


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[SilverSuzieQue]

Yep I have a pizza stone but defying gravity and being successful in this technique would be amazing! Don’t you think?

[tekobo]

53 minutes ago, SilverSuzieQue said:

Yep I have a pizza stone but defying gravity and being successful in this technique would be amazing! Don’t you think?

 

Yup, I think it would be fun if it worked.  Worth trying.

[SilverSuzieQue]

Teobo I like your sense of adventure. I really thought someone here would have experimented with this technique. I guess when I get my grill I will do the honors!

[tekobo]

15 hours ago, SilverSuzieQue said:

I guess when I get my grill I will do the honors!

Looking forward to you getting your grill.  It is always such a lot of fun to try out things you never had the chance to with a conventional indoor oven or barbecue.  I can imagine a nice, soft, hot naan but have never got around to trying it.  The race is on, subject to what happens to the Singaporean port U bend.  

[Braai-Q]

21 hours ago, SilverSuzieQue said:

Yep I have a pizza stone but defying gravity and being successful in this technique would be amazing! Don’t you think?

I've made Naan using a contemporary tandoor. Once you know the stickiness that you're aiming for, it's quite easy as the physics of a tandoor are not dissimilar to the KK. That said, I've not actually tried it in my KK but your air temperature has to be quite high - around 450-500 degrees to get them pillowy. 

My only reservation is that the walls of the KK are not self cleaning and I don't want to drag carbon deposits into the food. 

I'm making pizza in the next week, I think I might experiment while the KK is that hot and see what I can come up with.

[SilverSuzieQue]

Oh please do tell me the results and what happens! What I have read is the dough needs to be firmly pressed against the walls of the oven. I agree the grill needs to be hot but no temperatures cited. Documentation also said it takes 7-8 minutes. Looking forward to your full report!

[tony b]

Where can you buy or how do you make the doohickey that you slap the bread against the wall with?

[CeramicTool]

Very cool thread. I have tried bread before at high temp like 500-550f but it always burns to black. Charcoal on the bottom. I didn't understand then, but I think I do now. Back then, I tried to preheat the base ceramics just enough so that the bottom and top would be finished at the same time. It rarely worked, and was often disastrous.

It seems this entire thread is about how to get extreme heat from the bottom of the loaf to the top, and that large amounts of moisture in a small amount of time (high RH, more even temperature throughout the entire kamado) is the key to even cooking and crust generation.

Experts, is this a fair synopsis? What am I missing? About to have a other go round next week.

[dj-dj]

I have a 32” big bad on order and would like to bake bread in it. 
 

My kitchen ovens are steam ones, and I make sourdough loaves with generally 50% French organic t65 flour and the other half a mixture of different grains that I mill using a Mockmill. 
 

I don’t fully understand the arrangement of cake tin and aluminium discs people are using to create steam, could someone explain this a little more?  Why not just drop ice cubes onto the drip pan in the KK just before putting the bread onto the baking stone?  I am clearly missing some  complexity here, so please feel free to explain as if talking to a complete novice. 🤣