I have a LG electric oven with no visible heating element on the bottom, just on the top for broiling.
Baking in a cast iron Lodge combo pot. If I cook on a lower rack in my oven will that make the bread darker on the bottom? Thanks so much!
I, too, have an electric oven with no visible heating element on the bottom. When I bake sourdough in my cast iron pot on a lower rack, the bread does get much darker on the bottom. Bread still tastes great, but the bottom has a slightly burned taste. I tried baking in a convection setting without much luck. My next step will be to try a lower oven setting using the convection mode or multiple layers of parchment on the bottom of the pot to see if that makes any difference. Good luck!
Thank you, Tartine says to bake on a lower rack, not sure why. I bake in the middle of my oven and still have to use parchment paper. I also found out my oven was 25 degrees hotter than it should be, so I reset that. Lowering my oven temp helped.
New to the Forum, and this may be waaaay out of date. I too had “burnt” bottoms on my SD in a Dutch Oven. One day while sorting pots and pans, I found two “spring form baking pans” ; the kind that have a latch on the side, and allow the bottom to be removed. The thought hit me that I could put that disk in the bottom of the DO, adding another layer. It help a tiny bit until I realized that the disk has a rounded shoulder. When I “turned it over” so that the rolled should was down, it created a thin air layer between the bottom of the DO and the top of the disk.
In that position, the bottom of my loaves came out baked, but not burned…now works every time.