Baking Steel for Artisan Bread Oven Spring

Baking Steel for Artisan Bread Oven Spring

Baking Steel isn't just about pizza. It's also about bread, and in particular, artisan bread with that perfect oven spring - the expansion of dough in the oven that gives it a light and airy texture. The key to this is heat retention, and that's where Baking Steel excels.

The original Baking Steel was born out of a quest for better pizza. Andris Lagsdin, its founder, was inspired by Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine, which claimed that steel conducts heat better than stone. So he prototyped a thick steel slab at his family's Stoughton Steel Company and launched it on Kickstarter in 2012. It took off after Kenji López-Alt reviewed it on Serious Eats, and the rest is history.

But what about artisan bread? Well, as it turns out, the Baking Steel's heat retention properties are just as beneficial for bread baking as they are for pizza making. The thick steel slab absorbs and holds heat like a champ, creating an environment that fosters oven spring in dough. This means that your artisan bread will have that light, airy texture we all love so much.

The Baking Steel line has expanded well beyond the flagship Original ($129, ¼" thick pizza steel) to include griddles for stovetop use, cherry wood pizza peels, pumice cleaning bricks, dough recipe kits, and accessories. They sell direct via bakingsteel.com (Shopify), on Amazon, and at Sur La Table.