I am fairly new to sourdough bread baking game, but I am quite happy with how easy it is to use Miele steam combi for sourdough bread as well as other baking that moisture would be beneficial.

My current recipe is to preheat the oven with 100% moisture at 225*C, then bake in this setting for 15 minutes on perforated pan. Second part is 225*C with out any moisture (0%) for 20-30 minutes depending on the loaf.

Since there is an intention for bread baking in your question, perhaps, have a good look at steam combi to see if it would fit your need better.

Thank you both for your replies. I have baked bread for many years using different methods to introduce steam into the oven. On a trip to New Zealand a few years ago, I saw the Miele Combi steam oven and realised that would give me the steam I needed.

Coming back to Canada, they were not yet available. In the meantime we moved to a new condo and decided to order one for our new place. While waiting, my husband realised that here in Canada, the steam combi is only available as a 240v appliance and we can only get up to 208V in our condo.

So regretfully I had to forget about it. Then I saw the M series - which is available at 208v and wondered if it would do the job.

Kimg1114 seemed to imply that it was only reasonable, not great for sourdough and since we are looking at up to C$10,000, we want to be sure we are getting what we need. Is there anything else that the M series excels at?

That's a bit unfortunate that you can't get a combi because of voltage supply. I don't have an M-touch oven myself, only have the combi, but have been to Miele cooking classes to see stuff during buyer decision process.

I just checked with the note given to me at the class, it said that each burst of steam for moisture plus oven is about 100ml for 5-8 minutes duration. The info is embed in manuals of older model such as H6260BP, page 58. Newer model manuals do not seem to have such information in print.

For me, I probably will try to do 3 bursts one right after another during the initial phase of bread baking, then activate the "crisp" function to reduce the moisture amount in the oven to minimum.

Or perhaps, use other methods to introduce steam for bread baking, and just keep moisture plus feature for other things.

kimg1114, could you let me know how dark the sourdough bread was, and the browning level setting? What's the better pan? It was always pretty dark even the browning level is set to the lowest. I hope you can try those with high sugar content. The oven always burns mine. Brioche is the worst. :-( The browning on the white bread and sroudough rolls are normal. Along with manual baking programs, I don't think the temperature of the oven is off.

Before bursting each steam, the oven draw water. So the number of burst should not affect the amount of each steam burst.

I alwasy think Miele put more restriction on manual steam burst than how they use steam in masterchef plus programs. For example, steam is used durig proof phase in mc+ programs. I haven't figured out how to do it in manual. The convection fan is not running when steam is injected in mc+ programs. In manual moisture+ mode, only surround disables the fan, but it is not a proper mode for baking bread.

A mc+ program contains multiple cooking stages, which allows using more than 3 bursts during baking. However, when moisture+ is put in a Favorites program, which allows multiple stages, it is not possible to configure all the options (e.g. type of heating) of moisture+. If you don't have this problem, I could ask Miele if an updated firmware is available.

Attached are pics from the first loaf. I up'ed the browning on the first loaf from the factory default maybe one or two notches and used the universal pan. I also pulled it out well before the time had expired. The second loaf I used a USA pan with parchment and lowered it one notch below the factory. My next thought was to put it on the third rather than second shelf. My combi steam function was not working (DOA 5 days after install) at the time, but now that it is fixed I prefer to use it for sour dough and have not gone back to M+ cycles. I did bake some baguettes with M+ cycles and they turned out pretty nice. Great info on the burst of steam. I have yet to have a chance to visit the Miele design center and take some of their classes. I have not put Moisture + in a favorites.

Thank you for the pics, kimg1114. It would be great if you could also post a pic of a loaf from your Miele combi steam for comparison. I am curious how it turns out for other people because still fairly new to this game myself. I posted some of my results in Miele combi steam oven owner's thread.

Also could you please elaborate on combi DOA? Did the tech tell you what was wrong?

Cheers!

I have an older Miele oven and have found excellent results with
sourdough. It does not have the steam injection or any automatic bread
programs. While those sound nice, it also sound like more work controlling them than
spraying manually.

Also, I use an oven stone which gives the
sourdough a great texture on the bottom of the loaves. The stone is put
on the pull out rack on the lowest rung.

Baking sourdough in a metal pan will give a very different texture.

I
also wouldn't think to bake sourdough on a convection mode even if the
oven program suggests that. Reason is that, even with steam injection,
air circulating over the top of the loaf will discourage a full rise as
it tends to set the top of the crust.

I know you all have
wonderful new ovens with these special features and, while they are
certainly an upgrade in what an oven does, my suggestion is that the
oven is made to do what it needs to do to produce amazing bread -- not
adjust to the limitations the oven may provide.It's a bit amusing
that Miele has designed an oven with bread baking programs when most
Germans do not normally do this at home. Sounds like the ovens need some
adjustment. Hope you folks are not stressing too much over it. If plain old bake can be used and the steam injection done manually the results should be very good. Normally, I give the bread a good minute or two after it goes in the oven. Then spray. Then I don't open the oven again at all for the next 15 minutes since I find that's the critical time for the full rise. Then another good blast at about 18 minutes.

5 days after moving into our new home I started getting an "F20" fault on the combi steam whenever the steam function was enabled. It took 4 appts/2 visits (appts got cancelled by MIele) and 5-6 weeks to get it repaired. All of the steam related parts were replaced. They even had a supervisor from Boca drive up to St. Pete to help as it took two techs to remove/lift the oven from the wall. Attached are pics from last weekend. No bottom crust pics but it was as you would expect. Better oven spring than the M+. Used a similar formula as you did. Pre-heated a stone, added steam. then loaded the loaf with 100% for 10-15 min then reduced to 0% for the remaining. I have taken an on line class on sour dough and asked the instructor
how to use the steam option. He suggested shutting off the steam as soon
as the crust starts to show color as excessive steam will cause the
crust to be too thick which is similar to how a commercial oven would
work. As the original poster asked - other than bread - what are the other uses for the "Burst of Steam" in the M Touch convection oven?

I once spent the night in a bakery in a small town in France. How I learned to make baguettes. I timed my steaming after theirs. The idea is that the bread rises most during the first 18 minutes and, the many loaves I've watched confirm that for this type of bread. So steam early to keep top of crust moist and pliable and a burst as it begins to brown/set to promote crispness.

A friend who bakes a lot of bread also bakes sourdough in a preheated LeCreuset pot, covered. That crust is darker as the heat is more intense. But i prefer a chewy dark crust. But the lighter loaves photograph better LOL.

Thank kimg114, I twill try experimenting with steaming time in the future. It is good to know that it affects crust thickness.

Your bread looks nice, crumb is open and soft, it has some blistering on the skin too.

For other use of "Burst of steam" for M-touch oven, there are quite a number of types of food from Miele recipes:

• roasting meat
• chicken
• fish
• pastry baking
• cake

Here are two links from Miele Australia:

• Roasting and Baking with Moisture Plus
• Moisture plus oven recipes

I just found a post about Miele Moisture Plus oven and sourdough baking on the The Fresh Loaf. Her results look very promising.

@chanop -- Promising is the operative word. If you can get that sourdough starter to spontaneously generate kindly post the results. For me, it was like a demented science experiment that went nowhere but through a great deal of good flour.

rococogurl, I only started my sourdough journey about two months ago. After going through some research, I decided to use 50% rye and 50% white at 100% hydration for starter formula. For the first day, it was 25g rye, 25g white, and 50g water. After that for the first two weeks, I discarded half of the starter, and add 25g rye, 25g white, and 50g water daily, once a day.

So, here was how it looked initially.

After a day or two, I saw some amount of bubbles. It started to smell of fermentation, not in a nice way initially.

After a week, starter started to behave with regular pattern. It rose after feeding, and flop afterwards. Gas activity was quite reasonable I thought. Smell was already sweet and sour, in a nice way.

Then I decided to use the discarded part to bake at about 10 days. It was not too bad for my first sour dough loaf, a bit dense, a bit too tangy, but it was all right.

After two weeks I put my starter in the fridge and take it out a couple of days before baking to take it through the pace of feeding, making dough, fermenting, and baking etc. Not every loaf was successful. Here was from last week bake that my bread is heading towards holey, moist soft crumb, with good crust.

It will be quite a lot of learning, and experimenting for me in the near future.

@chanop - Good on you that you got it to work! I tried it 3 different times. Never got any bubbles. I went through pounds of flour. Finally gave up and started with some yeast. Now I have a 4 year old starter and it gives me wonderful bread which our friends love. I keep the starter in the garage fridge and just take out a small amount and start feeding it. I bought the lined basket for boules as I like the large slices. You bread looks great.

Is it necessary to bake it on the metal pan for the steam to work?

@rococogurl, from what I have read, rye flour is very forgiving. If you are keen again for fun factor, give rye flour a shot.

Many home baking recipes call for preheated oven at 500*F with baking stone inside; insert a dough, cover for steaming action, and reduce temperature to 450*F; lift the cover after 10-15minuted and bake further.

Miele combi only goes up to 435*F, and I have only a small pizza stone at hand, therefore couldn't quite replicate those baking recipes. Initially I baked on universal tray, but bottom crust was a bit soggy. Perforated tray allows moisture to escape and yields more crispy bottom crust. At the moment, I only preheat the oven, just until it reaches the temperature before putting the dough, basically I set stage 1 program for 435*F 100% humidity for 30 minutes, and put in the dough after 15 minutes. Stage 2 program is 435*F for 30 minutes, however, I keep my eyes on the dough and pull it out as soon as it looks ready.

If I get a bigger stone in the future, I might just try to preheat the stone at maximum temp for a longer period of time, and will see if this makes any different for combi oven. I might try my small pizza stone with a small boule for experiment in mean time.