I just made the Cranberry Walnut from @Fermentada and Eric’s cookbook. It is delicious and turned out beautifully! I did let it get a little bit overbaked, I always forget that for my altitude/oven I need to check bread at the lower of the suggested times.
I also have to give a shoutout to the Breadtopia batard clay baker. I just got it and every loaf has been fantastic so far. Much better than my dutch oven!
Hi, Amy…
Thank you for sharing a picture of your Cranberry Walnut Bread. It looks absolutely luscious… a perfectly lovely “holiday” bread.
Thank you, also, for sharing your experience with Breadtopia’s batard clay baker, especially the part about getting better results with it than with your dutch oven.
I’ve been looking at their oblong-sized clay baker partly because it seems to me to be more conveniently sized for lunchbox sandwiches than my dutch oven and partly because I would really like to be able to bake two loaves at a time, and it looks to me as though there’s enough room for two oblong proofing baskets in the Brod & Taylor proofing box and for two oblong clay bakers in my oven.
Now that you’ve had an opportunity to work with Breadtopia’s batard-sized clay baker, does it seem to you as though you could just as well fit two of them into your oven as one?
Or is there some reason I don’t know about why everybody seems to be baking only one loaf at a time?
Like they turn out better if you bake them one after the other, or something?
Any light you could shed on this would be much appreciated.
warmest regards…
Elizabeth
Hi Elizabeth,
I think you could fit two batard ones. I haven’t tried it though, so I couldn’t swear to it. 
I’ll leave it to more experienced bakers to respond on whether or not there’s any reason not to bake two at once. I’m definitely not the expert!
Best,
Amy
Whenever possible, I bake two loaves at a time, either on a large baking stone for hearth style baking, or in bread pans for everyday sandwich bread. The most expensive part of making bread is turning on the oven. The sooner I can turn it off, the better the bread tastes. 
The baking time is the same for 1 loaf or 2 loaves.
It comes down to whether or not there is room in the oven for two loaves. If you have a stone big enough to fit two loaves with 2 or 3 inches between them, in an oven big enough for two loaves arranged like the number ‘11’ and not like ‘=’, you should be good to go. Keep in mind you are going to need room to spin the bread around half way through the bake. For me, that means lifting and pulling out the rack with a very heavy, very hot stone in place to turn the loaves around, then lifting the rack to slide it back in. I cannot fit two clay bakers or cast iron dutch ovens in my oven, so when baking in those it is done one loaf at a time.
@Amy.poinsett I’m so glad you are enjoying your batard/oval baking vessel and the cranberry walnut recipe in the cookbook. Thank you for sharing your experience. Your bread looks delicious!
@Waffles Definitely bake two loaves at once if you can fit it. When I had three teens in the house, this was the default Another thing I like to do is roast vegetables alongside or just after baking a bread while the oven is hot, you might as well cook a squash!
Hi Amy,
Thank you for “weighing in” on this issue. You may not feel like an “expert” yet, but I for one appreciate knowing about your preference for the results you get with the clay baker versus the dutch oven.
The main advantage of the dutch oven, it seems to me, is that just about everybody has one. Translated, this means you can stir up and ferment a ball of dough and bake it in whatever covered pot you happen to have around the house and enjoy the fruits of your labors like people have been doing for thousands of years without having to first invest a lot of money in specialized equipment.
If you’re considering how you might factor baking your own bread into your daily life, though… well, that’s a different thing, isn’t it?
You start wondering about things like whether one loaf a day would be enough… and if you have three teenagers in the house like Melissa did, you know it would not!
Thanks again…
Elizabeth
Hi, Otis…
Thank you very much for these two-loaves tips!
You’ve raised some issues I hadn’t thought of, like the difficulty of dealing with very heavy, very hot stones and pots and so on.
I’d been thinking of getting some firebrick to lay on the lower rack of my oven, but now I’m realizing that I’d better slow down and take things one step at a time…
…to shoot for baking bread once a week, to start with, and then advance to once a day after I have a solid handle on all the steps that are actually involved in the process…
…steps like grinding the grain into flour… like ordering the grain to be ground in the first place!
Meanwhile…
…I’m going to begin by making my own starter with einkorn like Eric does because I can hardly wait to make waffles every morning with half of it like he does!
Thanks again…
Elizabeth
Hi, Melissa…
Your photo puts all this into perfect perspective!
I can clearly see that two oblong bakers could comfortably fit side by side in my oven…
…so thank you!
QUESTION:
Have you ever put a baking stone or a layer of firebrick on the bottom rack of your oven?
Thanks in advance…
Elizabeth
P.S.
How do you respond like you do to three people in one message? I’d like to learn.
If you put the @ symbol in front of someone’s username, then they get a notification that they’ve been mentioned in a forum comment.
I have a fibrament stone that I use for baking pizza, bagels, ciabatta, baguettes, and pita/naan if I am making so many that one by one in my cast iron pan doesn’t make sense. I get a lot of use out of it, but I don’t like to keep it in my oven because it slows the preheat in my experience e.g. a pan of brownies takes twice as long to bake. Like @Otis I’m trying to reduce the amount of time my oven is on, especially in the summer when it’s competing with my AC.
Here are some stone baking pics.
Hi, Melissa…
Thank you for the tip about using the “@” symbol as a way of replying to several people within one post… much appreciated!
As to the FibraMent slab, thank you for the info on that, too. Somehow it escaped my notice… probably because I’m trying to take in too much at once.
The link you provided has a tip about using two of these slabs, one on the bottom rack and another one on the top rack. I’d be interested to know what you think about that.
Here’s the reference:
- Do you provide FibraMent similar to the HearthKit’s that are available?
Yes, and you do not have to spend that much money. FibraMent is not only used as a baking stone. Our commercial accounts use FibraMent to line their oven ceiling and walls. For home ovens, place one baking stone on the wire rack at the very bottom of your oven. This will be your baking surface. Use a second FibraMent stone as the ceiling by placing on the wire rack above. Adjust the height of the wire rack so it’s immediately over the foods you are baking. Since we have greatly reduced the ceiling height of the oven, and are redirecting the heat back down on the items we are baking, wall inserts are not necessary. Our tests show using this method improves the bake quality.
Thanks again…
Elizabeth
what is your altitude? Mine is 5505 feet. If I bake to an internal temperature of 205, it is usually over baked.
On my next loaf of Cranberry walnut bread(today) I plant to go for an internal temperature of 195.
I haven’t done much research into lining my oven in this way because I’m happy with the results I get using baking vessels or just one FibraMent slab for breads and pizza that don’t fit particularly well into the vessels.
One thing to be careful about if you try this is whether there is sufficient air flow around the slabs.
For example if the temp sensor of your oven is in the middle-back of the oven it may be registering a cooler temperature than the space between the slabs and the oven top and bottom where the heating elements are. So the sensor tells the oven to keep on cranking heat until that middle area is at the target temp. But those confined areas may be so hot the brains of your oven get fried, usually at the top area.
I don’t know how many inches qualifies as good air flow or if having convection running would do the trick but not ruin the steam production of your bread process.
I’m at about 5600’ elevation. And agreed that it is basically impossible to get to the internal temp that a recipe calls for without overbaking. I usually start checking the look and the internal temperature at the lower end of the suggested time. If it looks right and I’ve gotten to 185-190 degrees, then I call it good.
With sourdough recipes, I haven’t adjusted the recipe for altitude at all and have had good results. However, I just made my first yeast loaf and it would have been a good idea to reduce the yeast by a 1/2 teaspoon or so. The dough was enthusiastic, shall we say! 
One inch clearance for circulation, all sides. I do not know if there is a recommendation for less space when using convection/fan. Not a recommendation but something I do, I put minimum two inch clearance between items because whatever is baking is a lower temp than the oven and not radiating heat like the oven walls.
@swifty6 @Fermentada @Amy.poinsett @Otis
Hello, Archer & Melissa & Amy & Otis… Thank You!
My dad used to say, “That’s true enough… as far as it goes.
The problem with it, though, is it doesn’t go far enough.
The question is, what’s the rest of the truth?”
It didn’t occur to me that altitude was a thing!
Or that my oven had brains!
Or that I could take the internal temperature of my bread!
Duh!
I live near Olympia in Washington, so that’s about sea level,
so 205-210º F/ 96-98º C is what I’d be shooting for, right?
And I have a Taylor thermometer that looks like an ice pick,
so I could stick that into a baking loaf to find out how hot
it’s getting inside, right?
And my stove is only a couple of years old, so I could get a
manual for it online and find out where the temperature sensor
is located in relation to the top and bottom of my oven and
then do like Otis does: arrange the slabs so there’s a “minimum
two-inch clearance between items because whatever is baking is
at lower temp than the oven and not radiating heat like the oven walls.”
I’d love to master the art of homemade pizza,
is why I originally started looking into baking stones.
Would pizza benefit from a baking stone above it
as well as below it, do you think?
Thanks in advance…
Elizabeth
I place a stone on the rack directly over the pizza with aluminum foil under the stone (shiny side down). The result is a slightly faster bake and an even doneness between the top and bottom of the pizza.
