1,504 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

Steam for baking bread

What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in mind.

This is because, when baking bread in an oven, it is vital that right at the start, the loaf goes into an atmosphere that is hot, of course, (around 480°F or 250°C), but also very humid: saturated with steam, in fact. Some of the water suspended in the air inside the oven will settle out evenly on the bread and will react with the dough to form sugars (in the chemical sense). These will help brown the crust in the famous Maillard reactions, producing this bread a more appetising colour, but that is not all. It also helps to form a thin, crisp crust.

141 K 4.5/5 (38 reviews)

Last modified on: June 16^th 2021

For this post: Comment Follow Send to a friend User-friendly URL

Steam for baking bread

So steam is indispensable: there are no beautifully browned, crusty loaves without it. You should note that once the crust is formed in the oven, after about 15 or 20 minutes, the steam is no longer necessary, so there is no need to keep adding it for the rest of the cooking time.

Creating steam in the oven

Professional bakers have the advantage of a special "Steam" control on their electric ovens. This injects water into the oven, which lands on very hot metal elements and vaporises to create the steam. They simply press a button and “pshhhh!” , that's it.

For amateur bakers like us, things are rather different, but here are a few ways to achieve a similar effect:

Conventional kitchen oven

For this set up, preheat the oven with an empty oven tray sitting directly on the bottom (oven floor or sole) and leave it in the oven to heat up.

La lèchefrite dans le four

When you put the bread in the oven, before closing the door, pour a large glassful of water into the burning-hot tray (do be careful not to scald yourself),

De l'eau pour faire de la buée dans le four

then close the door quickly.

On ferme la porte du four rapidement

The water hitting the hot tray will vaporise and create the steam in the oven, just as required.
If all the water has evaporated in under 15 minutes, add a second glassful.

Bread oven

If you are fortunate enough to have a proper bread oven, you will need to use a special technique, shown on this page which explains the Steam Machine.

To sum up: Without steam, no beautiful, good bread. You need to have steam in the oven during the first 15 minutes of baking.

Breads cooked with steam

Lasts posts

Should potatoes be washed twice?

Let's say you have to make a recipe that includes potatoes, let's say sliced, you'll most likely proceed as follows: Peel the potatoes, wash them, slice them, wash them again, pat them dry and add them to your recipe. But there's a "but": depending on the recipe, the second washing may be a bad...
May 19^th 20252,061 15

Grilled bacon is much better in the oven

Some recipes call for thin slices of bacon to be cooked and added to the recipe, or to prepare one of those delicious breakfasts known as "à l'Anglaise".
April 25^th 20251,9235

The thermometer is your friend

There are many recipes or foods that require a (very) precise cooking temperature: foie gras, sugar for caramel, meats and fish, and not forgetting pastries. For these few examples, getting the cooking temperature wrong can spoil the whole recipe or dish: undercooked, it's no good or misses the...
April 10^th 20252,2625

Travel cakes

You may have come across the term "travel cakes" ("gateaux de voyage" in french) for certain pastries, so let's take a look at what they're all about.
January 27^th 20253,719

The aromatic power of sugar

In the kitchen, sugar doesn't just sweeten, it also has an exceptional ability to capture flavors. Combined with aromatic ingredients, such as citrus zest, it acts as a veritable sponge for aromas. By taking the time to let the sugar soak up the flavors, you can transform your desserts, making...
December 25^th 20244,1625

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201374 K4.0

The different cooking modes

In cooking, cooking means bringing food into contact with a source of heat, to transform it: improving its taste, and sometimes its texture. This contact with the heat source can be achieved in a number of ways: these are the cooking methods, and let's take a look at the main ones.
July 24^th 20246,0444.7

What happens to the bread when you make it?

This bread that we eat every day, and that our baker makes for us, what happens during its manufacture so that it becomes bread? I will try to answer this question, and to summarize the complex alchemy that takes place.
May 28^th 202112 K4.9

The little trap of thick cream

When you need to add cream to a recipe, you might be wondering: thick (heavy) cream or liquid cream? In most cases, there's no big difference: you can use either. But there is one exception, and that's when the cream needs to be cooked, for a sauce for example, and here the difference between...
December 13^th 20244,1435

Perpetual stock

It's something you have probably have done yourself: cooked or pre-cooked vegetables before adding them to a recipe. This is almost always done the same way: peel the chosen vegetables (carrots, for example), cut them up, boil them in salted water (using a tablespoon or so of coarse salt per litre),...
November 22^th 201627 K5