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Welcome, my wonderful Insiders, to the deep and wide world of sourdough bread in a steam oven!
I’ve been baking sourdough since long before the pandemic made it a ‘thing’. To be honest, I’ve always thought that so many others do a great job of teaching on the topic that I didn’t want to wade in and talk about my plain old white wheat sourdough. But this is a very (very) highly requested topic and one I’ve never covered over on the Steam & Bake site. So many of you have asked for it to be covered in a newsletter that I can’t deny you any longer!
I hope you’ll enjoy reading about my take on sourdough today and that it sparks some of you to try baking some, even if you never have before.
Happy steam oven baking, see you here again soon.
Emily x
I want to preface today’s topic by saying that sourdough bread is a huge subject to cover! Although I bake sourdough regularly, I’m far from an expert in dough structure, proofing, forming and scoring.
There are loads of great resources for all those things on the big ol’ internet, but as usual, there’s not so much detail on using a steam oven to bake your loaves. That’s where I can help.
I’ll share my basic recipe and method for sourdough, so you can give it a try even if you’ve never baked a loaf before. But what I’m going to focus on is advice for baking your sourdough in a steam oven. Over many hundreds (thousands?) of loaves, I’ve developed my own standard processes for steam oven sourdough. They’re pretty foolproof no matter what type of loaf you’re baking.
I’ve broken up the information into major topics, so if you don’t care for the basics of mixing and forming a loaf, skip down to the ‘Bake’ section of the article for the steam oven stuff.
As always, if this subject brings up questions for you, send them through and I’ll answer those in the next issue of the newsletter.
Let’s get going!
This is the everyday, basic bread that I’ve made countless times. There are seemingly a million-and-one ways to arrive at a great sourdough loaf, so over the years I’ve refined my method to take on the most helpful tips I’ve seen elsewhere. I encourage you to start with this version and do the same.
The Season Flip
Sourdough isn’t really a seasonal thing, but there are lots of seasonal things we can do with it! Here are a couple of my current favorite bready ideas.
Southern Hemisphere
Sweet Crostini
I’m not sure if sweet crostini is a thing, but it is at my house.
Spread a generous slice of toasted sourdough with fresh ricotta or cottage cheese. Add sliced strawberries and a mint leaf or two if you’re feeling fancy. Drizzle maple syrup over the top and you’ve got a very pretty breakfast or a summery dessert.
Northern Hemisphere
Savory Pumpkin Toast
This is a riff on the vegetable ‘pizza bread’ at my local cafe. I can’t get enough of it but at $10 a portion I had to find a home version to enjoy instead! 😉
Make a fairly thick bechamel sauce, then cool and stir in grated sharp cheddar and chopped parsley. Spread the mixture over sliced sourdough and top with thinly sliced roasted pumpkin to cover completely. Arrange on a rack over a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and bake in a hot (dry) oven until everything is bubbling and golden.
A Thing I'm Loving
There are lots of things I use, eat, read about and enjoy in the kitchen that aren’t specifically related to steam ovens! Perhaps you’d like to know about some of them?
This is a thing I’ve loved for a long time. It’s pretty and practical, and fits right into the theme of this issue: a small, perfectly formed bread lame. If you’re into sourdough baking it would make a great Christmas gift request!
This is the exact lame I have, it was a gift a few years ago from my lovely Mum. There are lots of others on the same site; they are impeccably made and I love that buying from them supports a small artisan business.
*note: some of the links to A Thing I’m Loving are affiliate links, meaning I make a small commission if you make a purchase from that business. But rest assured I will never, ever share something I don’t personally recommend.
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Here’s your opportunity to ask me anything you like related to combi steam cooking!
I really encourage you to submit questions, and will do my best to answer as many as possible. Though I may not be able to get to every single question, I will carefully curate ones which are relevant and represent a variety of topics. We all learn from each other, and I often learn new things based on questions from all of you!
If you have an AMA question, please email it to [email protected]. Make sure you include the phrase INSIDERS AMA in the subject line so I can collate and read all your submissions.
I have had a couple of queries about whether prior AMA questions and answers can be collated somewhere on the Insiders website (not just inside the newsletters). It’s a great idea; bear with me while I figure out the best way to format it and make that happen!
This edition’s questions:
From Patricia
Q: I have been vexed by your bagel recipe which I have now tried 3 or 4 times. I have more often than not ended up tossing the dough because it has been a sticky mess. I achieved workable dough twice, and the outcome was very nice. It seems like a recipe I could perfect and become a reliable go-to, but that is not happening! The times I found success was by scooping the flour into the measuring cups rather than spooning and dropping into cups. So, clearly, doing the direct scoop yields more flour than the lighter spooning does, hence my better flour/liquid ratio. If you could recommend the weight of the bread flour for the recipe based on your experience, that might help? A final thought as source of trouble: it has been humid when I’ve tried the bagel recipe, but I’m in an air conditioned house, so I can’t imagine the indoor air is affected. Any help you can offer would be appreciated. It’s a great little recipe that I would love to have in my back pocket!
A: The issue here is almost definitely the weight of the flour, and it’s pertinent with this newsletter’s overall topic because I ALWAYS want everyone to weigh their ingredients, especially for baking!
I have, on both the Steam & Bake site and within Insiders, a little feature on the recipe cards that toggles between US Customary and Metric measurements. You’ll just need to switch that to get the weight measurements. The switch can be ‘flipped’ at the bottom of the ingredients list on each recipe; you’ll see a little blue line of text that reads ‘US Customary – Metric’, and the more bolded of the two phrases denotes what you’re looking at. Click to change it and you should see the differing measurements show up instantly.
It sounds like you’re doing everything else right in terms of the recipe, so I hope that little change fixes things for you and you’re on your way to consistently great bagels. 🙂
From Patricia again (I mean it when I say ask me anything, people! And I don’t mind more than one question!)
Q: I have nifty 500ml wide-mouth short mason jars I’d love to use for your Sous Vide Egg Bites. Do I just cook them longer? I wouldn’t fill them to the top, but I think they’d be more than half full, hence larger than your recipe recommends.
A:Yes, just cook them longer! Try 40-45 minutes; that should be easily enough time to cook them through even if you do fill them up.
From Kathy
Q: I have a very basic question about equipment. I purchased a scratch and dent Gaggenau combi steam oven, so it did not have any pans; just the rack. I think that the Gastronorm pans will be the right size. I’m interested in learning about what kinds/sizes of pans to get. So far I have (mostly) successfully used what we call “jelly roll” pans. When making a recipe that uses 100% steam, though, I end up with lots of liquid in the pan that I have to pour off — and risk dumping some of the food in the sink along with the liquid. I am convinced that I need to get some perforated pans. But how does one use them? Alone, so that the excess steam just drops to the bottom of the oven? Or does one use a perforated pan and a solid pan together? If so, are the pans made so that the perforated pan sits a bit above the solid pan? Or do I need to purchase a second rack and put a solid pan on a lower rack to catch the excess moisture?
A: Brilliant question! Yes, gastronorm pans are a good fit for Gaggenau steam ovens; the size that perfectly fits the oven is a ⅔ size, although a ½ and ⅓ will fit too.
The perforated pans can be used alone, and I do so when I’m steaming something fairly ‘clean’ like plain steamed vegetables. For other dishes, where the excess moisture dripping from the pan will make a mess in the base of the oven, I stack a solid and a perforated pan together. Different brands are molded slightly differently and don’t always stack neatly, so I’d recommend buying pans of the same brand. In every version I’ve tested, the perforated sits a few millimeters above the solid when they’re one on top of the other, and that’s enough for extra moisture to drop into the bottom pan.