I baked my second loaf using the oven stone this morning, and as I was getting ready to put the dough in the oven, I remembered Dad saying something about "misting the oven." This is a step I haven't taken before, and I've noticed a couple things.
First, when I've made loaves in the dutch oven - which helps retain more humidity around the loaf when you have the lid on for the first 2/3 of the bake - the resulting crust is...well, quite crusty (in a good way).
When I've made loaves without the dutch oven, either cooking them on a baking sheet or on the oven stone, the crust is much thinner and softer.
So I thought, perhaps this "misting" step is important for the crusty crust.
I didn't have a mister, but looking in Peter Reinhart's "Artisan Breads Every Day," I found the author suggested one can also use a "steam pan" to add humidity to the oven. He recommends adding hot water to a pre-heated steam pan (below the oven stone - be careful not to spill water on the stone) just before putting the dough in the oven.
Since I was in a hurry, and not reading the directions that carefully (like, how much water?) I put cold water into a baking sheet that just happened to be pre-heated under my stone (lucky break, I often store pans in the oven for lack of cupboard space). It created quite a blast of steam and warped the pan so much I thought I might have a spill. (A little more water and the pan un-warped). Then I closed the door and waited another five minutes or so before putting the dough in (should I have done it right away when there was more steam?)
The bread that finally came out was indeed more crusty - somewhere between the dutch-oven bread and the no-steam/no-dutch-oven bread. Also, I had to let the surface get quite dark before the internal bread temp finally crested 180 with ease - when I put the thermometer in the first time, the dial virtually crawled from 175 to 180.
After cooling, I cut into the first couple inches. Crust aside, the inside looked good. A bit more dense, particularly toward the bottom, but this was a 50/50 whole wheat dough. I'll add some pictures soon.
