Oven Humidity

An important factor for baking. One that has a profound impact on the outcome when baking bread. Humidity naturally decreases in an oven when heating. To increase the humidity you will need to produce steam.

There are two bread baking influencing factors you create when using steam:

• Heat transfer
• Moisture transfer

When introducing steam to the oven, you will not only transfer more heat to the dough but also moisture at the same time. As a result you will influence the following:

Crust colour

High humidity makes the crust more lighter because excess humidity blocks direct transfer of heat. Additionally steam will condense on the dough surface forming a barrier to heat transfer. This means crust temperature during baking is lower and results in a light coloured finished product.

Dough Expansion

The volume of your baked product will be increased and moisture is not lost from inside the dough. This means the outside will remain soft and this will allow the dough to stretch out before the crust starts getting hard.

Moisture Content

Keeping the humidity high in the oven raises the final moisture content of the baked product.

Crust Character

The humidity will make your crust look shinier and also thicker. It also makes the crust more chewy – so if you want a more crunchy crust, then do not increase the humidity.

So how much Steam is needed?

It really depends on a number of factors that you need to consider. One is, what are you baking – for small baking items like wheat pastries you would add lots of steam to make the dough expand more and faster as well as giving more shine to the surface of the product.

The other factor on how much steam you need to introduce is the baking temperature and the size of your oven. The bigger the oven size and the higher the baking temperature is, the more steam is taken up by the air inside – thus you need more steam.

We have put together a small summary of the steam times and management for a few dough combinations you can see in this next image.

When to get rid of steam

When you open the oven door, you can let the steam escape which will allow the baked goods to dry off and the crust becomes more crispy. When you are baking small baking items like pastries, you will not release the steam at all or maybe just shortly before you have finished the baking process.