Bricks in the oven
Since I started making sourdough bread two years ago, I was frustrated by heat management in my ordinary kitchen range.
We need a shot of heat to cause a quick explosion of the dough. Otherwise, the dough stays dense and merely dries out.
But two things happen in a typical kitchen range. For one, we open the door to unload and reload the oven, so we loose all our heat. Secondly, the loss of heat causes the oven to create intense heat for a prolonged time which creates hot spots and burns the loaf bottoms and the crusts. To curtail burning, I was rotating my loaves when I had 10 minutes left, which created work and meant opening the door and loosing the heat again.
That got me thinking of the hearth at Heather's Hearth (where I learned to make bread) and the heavy pizza ovens. They have masonry to hold heat and then release heat when you open and close the door. A kitchen range does not have such a heat sink.
I solved my problem by adding masonry - literally bricks - to my range. One range holds eight bricks and the second range holds four bricks. But you need a large oven box - 6.4 cubic feet - to allow space for the bricks and six loaves of bread.
The bricks in the oven make a huge difference. The oven takes a little longer to warm up but it holds the heat when I open the door. I reduce my energy consumption, eliminate the hot spots and the bottom loaf burns, and reduce the cooking time.
