Now. I’ve made this particular one twice. The first time…Well that was an experience. I put a glass pyrex dish in the oven for the steam pan. Then I preheated the oven. When I went to pour the water into the steam pan…it shattered right in front of my face. Very scary. Good thing it was safety glass. There weren’t any tiny pieces. After the hour it took me to clean up the mess, I tried again, minus the steam pan. I also didn’t mist inside the oven, because I don’t have a squirt bottle. Both times I’ve made this I made it without the misting, or steam pan. The first time I baked it on a sheet pan, the second on my pizza stone.

Both times the bread loaves came out perfect. Thank you for your amazing website. I will continue to use your site for ideas, and amazing recipes. (Your cinnamon rolls were amazing too)

My oven is tiny, and I don’t have a baking stone or a water spritzer so this is what I did. The racks were separated to the top and bottom slots on the oven. On the top rack I placed an 8″ Al-clad frying pan. On the bottom rack I placed a 14″ cast iron griddle. The boule (on parchment) went onto the griddle, and I poured about 1/4 cup almost boiling water into the frying pan to create the steam. Three times after I just threw about 1/4 cup hot water onto the sides and bottom of the oven at 30 second intervals like Reinhart says.

I’m pretty sure that this oven runs cool. It took about 22 minutes to get the bread to 190 degrees, and I could have probably gone a few minutes longer.

I halved everything in the recipe and it worked out just fine. When I put it into the oven I wasn’t sure what would happen because the dough just didn’t look right. It seemed a bit flat, even though I was careful to avoid degassing it when taking the dough from the bowl.
Cool as my oven runs, and I had it cranked up as high as it would go, I got a great oven spring on the loaf. It was all I could do to wait 20 minutes to sample this bread.

By itself it’s amazing. I cut a couple of slices and toasted them to go with a couple of fried eggs, and its the best tasting toast I’ve ever had.

To the rest of you, if you have any inhibitions about baking bread, I think this book is the answer. It motivated me to get busy and finally make some bread. Perhaps this is the first step toward the mastery I desire.