I accidentally let it slip in front of the boss that I like to bake and now I'm stuck making the sourdough at the restaurant I work at, dog I've been here like a month, I don't want to be workshopping your bread recipe. bread's getting good though, but I hate baking in a combi steam oven.
like, it looks great, but the crumb is still too dense for my liking and doesn't really get the squishy soft texture I'm looking for. It's a slightly upscale buffet restaurant, and I really want guests to fill up on (good) bread so we can save on food costs and time refilling the actual dishes.
Does anyone have any tips for open baking in a combi oven?
We're doing like 8-10 loaves a day when it gets busy.
Right now I'm doing a blend of manitoba, rye and a semi wholegrain heritage grain with high protein, 72% hydration and a starter that doubles in 4-5 hours. 4 sets of stretch and fold after kneading it in the bread mixer for around 5 minutes, total bulk ferment is around 5 hours and then cold ferment in the walk-in overnight.
Baked with 100% steam at 230c for 15 minutes with no fan, then no steam, still no fan, at 210c for 20-25 minutes and then 240c for a bit for the colour.
I think this one had some uneven fermentation for some reason, and the oven spring was lacking, even with the nice ear that formed, crumb is good, but dense
this one was really nice, but it spread out a little too much because I had too high hydration, around 80% (the other ones in the batch looked a lot flatter)
I feel like the bottom rack of the smaller oven produces the best loaves, but I can't really justify only baking 3 loaves at a time when we only have 2 small ovens and 1 big and produce food for around 100-200 people on weekends
Home baking is 'easy' if you have a good dough, just pop that shit in a cast iron dutch oven (to create a steamy environment) and uncover after 15-20 minutes to finish baking
Other tips:
Don't worry about getting picture perfect loaves with nice ears etc, just focus on incrementally improving the dough according to your specific circumstances.
Choice of flour, ambient temperature, scheduling when to bake and when to feed the starter are more important than shaping technique and your oven.
Always keep a log of what you've been doing so you can reference specific variables.
Try to lower the hydration at first so you can have an easier time working with the dough and shaping the loaf, then gradually increase hydration until you get the result you want.
Sometimes flour from the same brand has more or less water content and you need to adjust to that.