What is the Open Bake Method?
The open bake method in sourdough baking is a technique that skips using a closed vessel like a Dutch oven.
Instead, you are essentially turning your entire oven into one gigantic Dutch oven.
The sourdough dough is baked directly on a baking stone or baking steel, exposed to the open air.
You, the sourdough baker, have to introduce the steam during the first half of baking either by
- Adding boiling water into a shallow pan on the lower rack of your oven
- Adding boiling water into a cast iron pan full of lava rocks
- Spraying water into the oven before closing the oven door
This open bake method is great for people who don’t have a Dutch Oven, can’t lift a Dutch Oven or just don’t want to buy a Dutch Oven.
Instructions
Tools and Set Up
Notice this VERY SPECIFIC SETUP…
1️⃣ There’s a preheated empty pan on the bottom, where you will pour boiling hot water (this will create a ton of steam) —aim for ½ inch of water in the pan
2️⃣ Metal or thick cast iron griddle where you will place your dough (make sure this doesn’t take up the entire rack, or else it will block the steam from passing through around the dough) —DO NOT use ceramic, stone or clay —they will break!
3️⃣ Preheated empty upside down pan on the top to trap the steam (this will serve as the “lid”)
👉METHOD
Preheat your oven with all the pans inside —bottom pan for the boiling water, middle pan for the dough and top pan as the lid
When your oven is done preheating, in VERY QUICK SUCCESSION:
1️⃣ Put your dough on parchment paper,
2️⃣ Score your dough
3️⃣ Lift the dough by the parchment, place it on your middle pan
4️⃣ Pour boiling hot water into the bottom pan (be careful!!! The water will SPLATTER and cause A LOT OF STEAM —wear really long oven mitts and watch what you are doing!)
OPTIONAL (but will help):
5️⃣ Place ice cubes on the middle pan next to your dough.
Note: only do this on STEEL or very thick cast iron —not stone, ceramic or clay.