Tartine crust disappears ;-)

Hey!

I would love to know how to preseve the crunchiness of the crust myself!  I hope more experienced bakers will help with this for both our sakes!

In meantime, I wondered where in Northern Europe you are as I know that 1. IKEA do an inexpensive enameled cast-iron dutch oven (their Senior series), and also if you are in the UK, then TKMaxx is your holy grail place to buying an inexpensive good-quality dutch oven.  TKMaxx are a bit hit and miss but if you keep going to one that has housewares, there will be one there eventually.  I've bought a lot of great cook and bakeware there for very little money.

Hope this helps,

Lilith

Another way of getting a crunch crust is to bake the bread twice.  After the bread cools a little and the interior moisture has finished its migratation towards the crust and softens it, place it back in the oven for a period of time.  I don't have specifics as I fly by the seat of my pants, usually.  But you get the principle.

I agree with the other posts.

A couple of other suggestions...

If I use the Dutch oven method, I often find the crust is better if I not only take the lid off after steaming, but remove the loaf from the container altogether.

Another perhaps slightly left of field thought is that ovens are notoriously temperature-inaccurate. Could it be that your oven is in fact cooking at a lower temperature than you think? An oven thermometer might surprise.

Or... one last thing, are you giving sufficient time for the oven to attain a stable maximum temperature before loading the bread?

Kym.

You'd be surprised how much longer you can bake a loaf without overdoing the inside. Five minutes with the door open won't necessarily achieve what you're after. I would try 15, 20 minutes, even more, and with the door closed to retain the heat. If you think there is still a lot of moisture retained by your oven then opening the door for the last few minutes will help. 

Although there can be other factors involved, my crust is almost always significantly darker than your photo. Another benefit of a darker crust is more flavour.

I would still suspect that your oven isn't as hot as its thermostat is telling you - the lower the temp, the thinner/softer the crust.

Edit: Do you not lower the temp at all from 450°F (232°C)? That's certainly a lot higher than I usually end up with (assuming your thermo is accurate, though surely it wouldn't be that far out). I usually start off at 530°F (275°C) for the first ten minutes, then lower to around 360°F (180°C) for the remainder. It only falls very gradually to the latter temperature because of the baking stone, but at that temperature (using fan convection) it's virtually impossible to burn the crust; eventually if you left it in long enough the loaf would completely dry out but not burn/

On an average humidity day, the crust will still retain some crunch the next day.

Can you give a time line on your crispness?  Including when and how you store the loaf between baking and cutting and so forth up to loss of crispness.  Also if you could define your expectation of what crispness entails?

To any other contributors, can you give a report on your experiences in this area of crispness retention?

Farinam

Great suggestions above. My two cents-worth of contribution:

-Leave your oven on full heat for the whole bake and, as suggested, get an oven thermometer

-Bake for at least 55 minutes, with the loaf in the pot for 25 to 30 minutes

-Cast iron will more likely give you the desired finish, especially if you can get non-enamelled cast iron - try a camping store (not sure about Europe)

-Don't remove the whole loaf from the pot until it's been baked for at least, I reckon, 40 minutes

-If you've got a fan forced oven, use the highest spot you can fit the pot in and put it right at the back in front of the fan

-Make sure you preheat your oven for at least an hour

-Also, avoid overproving too far as you will then have limited residual sugar for Maillard Reactions.

and please keep us informed of your progress.

 Panfresca rightfully points out that his oven is different, and I should probably point out that when my oven is running flat out it's highest temperature is 235 Celsius.  Once I made the mistake of using a friend's oven at full-throttle and at half an hour the crust was perfect.  Of course, it would not have been finished inside the loaf.  The point here is that you'll have to work out what's perfect for your oven with what you're trying to achieve.

I would not recommend, necessarily, running your oven at full-bore if you were just baking a regular loaf on a pizza stone.  However, for the method you are trying to perfect I would suggest, as an experiment specific to the original post, that you use some or all of my aforementioned suggestions to get the brittle, glassy crust that I achieve when I bake bread in this manner.

I will repeat the suggestion by others above to get a thermometer to put inside your oven.

I'll have to partially disagree with , or at least further clarify, what Panfresca has disputed from my previous post regarding the evenness of heat.  I won't guarantee it as such, but in a cast iron pot the heat "evens out" a bit, regardless of the direction of the heat, although this does have its limitations so, depending on your oven, you will probably want to rotate the pot 180 degrees when you take the lid off.  Pyrex doesn't have the same heat transfer properties as cast iron, so you might want to rotate the pot 90 degrees four times throughouut the bake, although this then decreases the temperature inside your oven as your are opening the door more times.

I also use casserole pots, made of glazed china - or whatever you want to call it - which I prefer to pyrex, but they're not as good as cast iron.

The bread was removed from the oven at about 7pm, and at around 10:30pm the crust was still nicely crisp. It was then wrapped in a tea towel over night.

Wrapping your bread will change the crust.  Try leaving it cut side down on the counter.

I am just starting out and have borrowed this book from the library.

Thanks for the useful info re baking. I don't have a cast iron dutch oven either and may use a pizza stone for cooking and a pan with water for the steam.

How do you all usually bake your bread? Would love some tips.

Thanks

 As per my most recent blog post, I accidentally baked a loaf on full throttle for the whole bake, and it didn't do it any harm at all. But then, even though I haven't measured it I'm pretty sure my oven isn't getting to temperature. I always let my bread cool completely before slicing or wrapping, then I wrap it in a tea towel or brown paper. The crust always stays crispy. I think your loaf looks great.

 All baked goods go soft fairly quickly if not kept in an air-tight container.  Think biscuits.

A tea-towel may not be optimal for crust maintenance, but it delays the time when the bread dries out and becomes rock-hard!

John

Have you tried letting the bread cool over night without a cover?  I've found the long cooling time really helps.

I've never baked in a dutch oven, but for most breads I generally have the oven churned up to about 230C for starters, then after the first 15-20mins (once steam has gone) I turn down to 200C for another 30m (or so depending on loaf).  Pretty much always get a good crust - just love the cracking noise of a good 'un when you take it out of the oven. 

Loaf usually keeps its good crust for a couple of days at least.  I never store in a plastic bag, just cut side down on a board with a tea towel draped over the top to keep the flies (and cats) off it!  Sometimes I'll cut the loaf in half, leave half out as above, then slice the other half and put in freezer, that way I can take out a slice or two at a time when life gets (sadly) too hectic for bread making!  They defrost like brand new!

Maybe the dutch oven helps retain some moisture from the steam, so some time out of the dutchie towards the end of the bake (maybe 15-20m) might help with the crunch?