Steam Baking
The Vienna bread-production process innovations are often popularly credited for baking with steam leading to different crust characteristics, however Horsford, in his 1875 Report on Vienna Bread, wrote:
| “ | The Austrian bakery in the Paris Exposition in 1867, for the production of loaf-bread, was provided with the steam-arrangement; but the oven of the Vienna bakery, on exhibition at the Vienna Exposition for the production of rolls, was a dry oven. | ” |
The dough is placed into the oven under a ceiling of steam or, alternatively, the oven is injected with steam as soon as the loaf is loaded. This adds moisture to the body, the crumb, of the bread which delays establishment of the crust and tends to prevent cracking, resulting in a more evenly risen and thinner crust as well as a light and airy crumb. When the steam is gone (sometimes today, withdrawn), the dry heat of the oven bakes the crust, producing its characteristically slightly crisp and flaky texture. Vienna bread is typically formed as an oblong loaf, but can be baked in other shapes. As a longer loaf, it may well have been the origin of French bread as bakers there attempted to adopt the steam method to produce their baguettes.
Read more about this topic: Vienna Bread
Famous quotes containing the words steam and/or baking:
“Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
“There was no speculation so promising, or at the same time so praisworthy, as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)