Tag Archives: baking

Baking on Vacation. No, I Don’t Bring My Starter.

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I’ve gone to my house in Hawaii and so far, I’ve already baked a couple of times and will bake bread yet again for a Labor Day party in couple of days. I got a special request for Labor Day by the host of the party, and my wife’s friend invited us to dinner tonight and asked if I could bake some bread to bring to the dinner. Then my daughter asked me to bake some bread for her because she hadn’t had any of my bread for a year.

It is never a problem for me to bake. I love it and enjoy baking when I have the time; yes, even on vacation. But one thing I haven’t done is bring my starter with me. I suppose could bring a little starter and grow a levain if someone specifically wanted sourdough, but my thinking is that I can make so many diverse types of bread that it seems almost pointless to bring a starter.

Plus, I refuse to let my starter rule my life. Holy crap! I’ve seen people proudly post pictures of themselves in their hotel rooms proudly holding up their jars of sourdough starter that they took on vacation with them so they can feed it. To each their own, but if I’m on vacation, I don’t want my activities limited by my freakin’ starter feeding schedule! I feed my starters (yes, I have anywhere from two to four) before I leave then put them in the fridge. They’ll keep for weeks.

So what did I bake? I made two batches of ciabatta, one for us and one for the dinner party with our friends. For the Labor Day party, I baked two dozen Hawaiian rolls that went perfect with the BBQ short ribs we had. Both of those types of bread just required regular old yeast. For the ciabatta, I made an overnight biga preferment. Wow! Were they delicious.

And the Hawaiian rolls were the hit of the party! They didn’t last at all! They were rich with butter and soft and pillowy. I’m going to have to make more!

Anyway, the point to this is that if you want to bake on vacation and have the means to, go for it. But just remember this: It doesn’t have to be sourdough.

Baking with Steam

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Almost all the recipes I post here say “bake with steam” for X amount of minutes. For commercial bakers that have steam-injected ovens, that’s a no-brainer. But most home ovens don’t have a steam injection function (unless you have a Miele). For those of us who don’t have that, our only alternative is to use a vessel of some sort to hold water that will evaporate in the high temperature of the oven.

I use the bottom tray of my broiler pan as my vessel. Others use a cast-iron skillet. I actually prefer the broiler pan as a cast-iron skillet requires preheating. No matter what you use, it should be able to hold at least 1-2 cups of hot water.

Here’s how I “bake with steam”:

  1. About 3-5 minutes before I place the loaves in the oven, I pour about 1-2 cups of hot water into my pan. This gives the water a bit of time to heat up and creates a steamy environment for when the bread gets loaded.
  2. Immediately after placing the loaves, I splash a few tablespoons of water near the outer rim of the pan to create a cloud of steam to make up for the steam I lost when I loaded my loves.
  3. When the time comes to vent the steam, I simply remove the pan from the oven and then finish baking dry.

Note that to avoid losing too much oven temperature. You have to be real quick because you don’t want to leave the door open too long. Also, some books, like “Flour Water Salt Yeast” will say to use just a single cup of water. That’s never enough for my oven because it has a built-in fan that will quickly evaporate the water. So I almost always use twice as much water as listed in the recipe. You’ll have to experiment with your own oven.

In the words of the great Jacques Pepin, “That’s it!” It’s not perfect. Most ovens like mine are built to naturally vent moisture. When I’m baking, I actually plug the vents using some foil and Gorilla tape. This serves to both retain the steam and helps maintain my oven temp.