Baking Bread in the Tovala Smart Oven Pro
The importance of steam when baking bread and how I use my Tovala Smart Oven Pro for my bread baking.
This is a re-write of my original post on baking bread in the Gen 1 Tovala Oven. The content has been updated for baking in the Tovala Smart Oven Pro.
Steam. It’s Important.
One of the main things I learned when I first started baking, is how important steam is for baking bread. I baked my first few loaves directly in my regular oven on a baking pan, and although they were edible and tasted great, they didn’t have most of the characteristics I now look for in a great bake: oven spring (i.e. lots of airy pockets), soft/moist crumb, light/crispy crust.
Turns out, when all other factors are kept constant, incorporating steam in the first 10–15 minutes of baking your bread will have a significant impact on all three of those characteristics. The steam keeps the dough flexible allowing for maximum oven spring before a crust beings to form. Without steam, the crust will set and dry quickly which will keep the bread from getting a nice rise while baking. This leads to a denser crumb. That may be desirable for things like bagels, but for sourdough boules, a lighter, air filled crumb is much more what you’re looking for.
Baking with steam at home
Ok so we all agree that steam is important when baking bread. But most of us home bakers don’t own a fancy combi-oven like the ones found in most bakeries. These are ovens that can be programmed with specific bake cycles and often have a button or method to easily inject steam. Instead, we resort to a variety of methods to add steam into our baking process.
A dutch oven is the most approachable method that also leads to some of the best results. As the dough bakes, it releases steam which gets trapped in the pot when the lid is on. This is the best method for baking a boule (a round loaf of bread).
The times when a dutch oven falls short is when you need finer control over the amount of steam or if you’re making bread that isn’t shaped like a boule - i.e. bâtard, ciabatta, or baguettes. For those, the options for getting steam into your oven quickly veer away from the approachable.
Quick disclaimer — I work at Tovala but I would have written this even if I didn’t because of how useful having an affordable, counter top steam oven is for baking bread.
Okay, with that out of the way, what exactly is a Tovala oven? The Tovala oven is a counter top smart oven that can be programmed to steam (Pro version only), bake, and broil. It’s essentially a combi-oven, like those found in restaurants and bakeries, but an order of magnitude cheaper and built for home use.
The main benefits of using the Tovala oven over my dutch oven are:
Programmable oven cycles via the Tovala mobile app which allows for finer control of the steam
A shorter total bake time
No need to confine my dough shapes to circular loaves that fit in a dutch oven
Baking in a dutch oven requires a 45 minute pre-heat while the dutch oven gets nice and hot, followed by a 1 hour bake with a step in between to remove the lid. The Tovala cuts that down considerably. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still use my dutch oven for baking every so often or when I’m making two loaves at the same time. However, my Tovala has become my default.
By programming the oven cycles I can also fully automate any fluctuations in temperature or steam that I want. And the best part, once I put the bread in, I can walk away until the oven beeps at me to let me know it’s done. No need to remove the lid or any other steps in between. As you’ll see below, the total time in my Tovala oven is 44 minutes. That’s faster than the pre-heat time alone when using a dutch oven!
The Cook Cycle
There aren’t any pre-programmed cycles for baking bread in the Tovala app, but it’s easy to create your own. Thanks to Chrissy, our head R&D Chef at Tovala, this is the cycle I’ve been using and getting fantastic results with:
A few important notes:
The first 8 minute step is meant as a pre-heat step. Leave the Tovala sheet pan in the oven for those 8 minutes so it gets nice and hot. If you have two sheet pans, stack them on top of one another to keep the bottom of the bread from getting too dark. Lining a single sheet pan with a double layer of foil or a silicon baking mat is another alternative.
Around the 8 minute mark, take out the sheet pan and place your dough on it
Score your dough and place it in the oven
Sit back and relax as your bread bakes to perfection over the next 36 minutes
500g Boule?
Many of the recipes I tend to use end with a single ~900g boule. The total dough weight (total weight of all ingredients) for this Perfect Loaf sourdough loaf is 900g per boule. And my other go to, the Tartine loaf, is 1010g.
I’ve found that baking a 500g boule in the Tovala oven yields the best results and is also a great size that doesn’t take up a ton of space in my freezer and lasts my family of four about 1-2 days. This forces me to keep making fresh loaves. But I often will make a 1000g dough and divide into two 500g boules and bake them back to back.
I’ve tried both of those larger boules that I listed above, and while they still bake really nicely, they need about 10-15 more minutes to get to that nice deep ochre color that I prefer. And if you get a really nice oven spring, especially with the size of the Tartine loaf, the loaf nearly touches the top coils which causes it to get darker on top more quickly than the rest of the bread.
If you prefer the 900g boules, don’t let this deter you. Add 15 more minutes to the final bake step and watch it closely in those last 10 minutes and take your dough out when it’s at the right level you prefer. You can then update the cook cycle for next time!
If this inspires you to bake bread in your Tovala oven, or you already bake bread in your Tovala oven, leave me a comment below!