Steaming my oven easily, no more worries! I posted this method several years ago on my blog on 'thefreshloaf.com'. I called it 'My New Favorite Way to Steam my Oven'. Since then it's been called many things! I got the idea from steaming suggestions for a wood fired oven. I changed it so I could get some fast hot, continuous steam. I didn't want to worry about breaking my oven door's glass, tossing ice cubes or water into my oven, lifting anything hot or heavy. Well, you get the general idea. I'm a senior and not that steady or strong anymore. Since my original post on my blog. I've modified it even more. Here's what I do and it works for so very many bakers now use this method maybe with a few tweaks of their own. 1. What you need. A glass pyrex dish, cooking Tongs, 1-4 small terry towel type towels, I use white bar towels and of coarse oven mitts. Microwave oven, a metal pan. I now just use two of those aluminum pie pan's I have collected over the years. I double them together for extra sturdiness. I've also used old bread pans, small sheet pan with edges. Use a pan or two that will hold the soaked towels and a little water in the bottom. 2. Fold the towels in half and roll them up. Place them in the pyrex dish. Soak them throughly in water and even some extra water in the bottom of the pyrex dish. 3. Place the dish with towels and water into your microwave oven and heat until water and towels are very, very hot. 4. Some extra boiling water. I just heat my electric kettle with some boiling water. 5. When the towels and water are hot. Lift the dish from the microwave with your oven mitts on. With your tongs, place the very hot rolls towels into your metal pans. Add a little boiling hot water either from your pyrex dish or your kettle water into and over the towels. Just enough so you have maybe about a half inch or so of water coming up the sides of the rolled towels ' I usually use two towels per pie pan'. Sometimes I place two pie pans in my oven and you could place them onto a sheet pan if your feeling a little unsteady using pie pans. I also find one pie pan with two rolled towels works great too. Because my oven stone covers the whole bottom of my oven. I place my towel pan on a rack above my baking bread to steam my oven and it works wonderfully. I 'pre-steam' my oven, by placing the towel steaming pan in just a few minutes before I load my loaves into the oven. I remove the pans after I'm done pre-steaming, usually about 5 minutes and, steaming my breads for about 10 minutes. A total of about 15 minutes. That's it. If you want even more steam, unroll the towels a little with the tongs. SylviaH

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