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Bread By Elise Baking Steel Sheet made using 100% Canadian Steel.

How Do I Bake Sourdough On Steel? 10 Easy Steps!

Baking on steel is awesome! Baking time decreases and the colour of a sourdough loaf takes on a real artisan shade. Steel also is pretty much indestructible making it a perfect addition to your sourdough tool kit.

So we know that sourdough bread needs to be baked at a high temperature and with steam, but how do you do that using steel to bake with?

Here are 10 easy steps to baking sourdough loaves and pizza using baking steel.

*If using Bread By Elise's steel that's 11 x 16 inches it can fit 2 - 1000g loaves and 1 large rectangular pizza.

  1. Pre-heat oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour
  2. 15 minutes before the preheat finishes place 2 cups of water in a shallow pan on the bottom shelf of the oven
  3. Once your oven is preheated, place the cold dough on a pizza peel-seam size down-on parchment paper that is cut 1 inch greater than the size of the dough.
  4. Using a UFO Bread Lame or other scoring tool score your sourdough loaf as usual
  5. Open the oven door and carefully slide your sourdough bread or pizza onto the steel, keeping the dough on the parchment paper
  6. Spray a couple of sprays of water into the oven cavity being careful not get any water on the oven glass, and quickly close the oven door.
  7. After 3 minutes open the oven door and spray inside the oven cavity again. Repeat this step at 6 minutes. The goal is to keep the oven steamy for the bread to spring.
  8. After 19 minutes remove the pan of water very carefully and only if it still has water in it.
  9. Turn oven down to 450 degrees Fahrenheit (this temperature can be adjusted to avoid burning the sourdough loaf. *Another option is to use your pizza peel to slide you bread off the steel and onto the oven shelf. 
  10. Continue to bake the loaf but keep in mind your bake will be faster and you will find it is done faster than when you use a Dutch Oven.

Since baking with steel decreases baking time...a bit of experimenting is needed.

Let me know how you get on in the comments and if you have tweaked something that works better.

UPDATE: I've been experimenting with cold steel in a 500 degree over and I have to say, it is going really well and I'm not having any burnt sourdough bottoms. I bake 22 minutes leaving the steel at 500 degrees (oven never makes it back up that high until almost the end of the 22 minutes) then 5 minutes at 500. I then move the bread off the steel an onto an oven shelf for the remainder of the bake.

Comments

Thank you for writing up your process!

I’ve been using a Baking Steel for sourdough with some success for a while, but I’ve been struggling with burnt bottoms.

Can you elaborate on your update at the bottom of the post? What do you mean by cold steel in a 500 degree oven?

Thanks!

Do you sell the baking steels

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