Maggie Glezer's cookbooks are a marvelous contribution to our art, but I
have to correct her post about baking stones. There's very little radiant
heat at the top of an ordinary oven. There's *convected* heat (hot air),
especially if you have a fan blowing it around. But in order to have
radiant heat at the top of your oven, you need to turn on the broiler, a
particularly bad idea if you are baking bread on the top shelf! Radiant
heat is the warmth you feel when you step out of the shade on a sunny day.
It has nothing to do with warm air.
The fastest way to heat up a baking stone is to put it on the floor of the
oven, because most non-electric ovens heat up by putting gas heat under the
floor. The heat will conduct (faster and more effective than heating the
air) straight from the metal to the stone. The problem with using the floor
of your gas oven is that the stone will get very very hot and then you need
to move it before you bake. Probably not worth the effort, Einstein!
Here's how I do it:
1. baking stone on the middle shelf
2. 60 minute minimum preheat
3. broiler pan with a brick or two in it as low as possible in the oven
4. (this is the best part) a 12 oz. seltzer can (like a Coke can, but it
never had sugar in it) with a tiny pinhole poked in the bottom. Moments
before the bread goes in, I fill the can with very warm water, keeping my
finger over the pinhole. I place the can in the pan, then slide in the
bread. Over the next 60 to 90 seconds, with the oven door *closed*, the
water seeps from the can to the pan and instantly evaporates without a risk
of scalding.
Have fun.
Seth Godin