Has anyone tried using a Pullman tin with a slightly scant amount of dough to trap steam with the idea of pulling the lid off halfway through the bake like you would with a Dutch oven?
I get that the sides of the bread would conform to the tin but would that give you good “oven spring” and a browned top on your loaves?
I just got a Pullman pan, and I’ve been wondering the same thing.
In practice, I’ve found since I posted this that I like just using the maximum amount of dough and just make sandwich bread loaves. The biggest reason for that is it maximises the amount of bread I make in one go and saves some energy and effort…
When I want ‘proper’ sourdough I just grab the Lodge Combo Cooker and make a round boule - although I admit I don’t like the shape of the slices I get from a boule lol. Obviously it still tastes great but it’s not so great for sandwiches (although sure you can still do that). I’m now just using the pullman tin for sandwich slices.
I agree on the boule slices. I have the oblong clay baker, which works well. But I’m intrigued by the straight side possibilities of the Pullman pan.
Any sort of inverted oven-safe pan or bowl works well to capture steam at the beginning of the bake. I use a full size steam table pan (21" x 12.5" x 6") that just fits over my 20" x 13" baking stone. (The 21" dimension includes the lip of the tray.) Though I have a clay baker, I use this setup when I want to bake multiple loaves at once, including longer loaves like baguettes. After loading my loaves onto the stone and covering them with the inverted pan, I slide the pan off one side of the stone and then use a pressurized pump sprayer to shoot a 3 second blast of fine mist under the pan and then slide it back over the stone to capture the steam. It seems to work pretty well.