Baking off large Ryes

When we are working with dough we always make extra so that we're sure everyone has enough to practice with. This means that there are always leftovers, which we make into really large loaves and bake off at the end of the day.

The rye bread in the picture weigh about 10 pound each. Once they were brown we baked them with the oven door open to keep the heat mellow. It's the only way to effectively reduce the heat of these large deck ovens when we still want to bake smaller loaves in the lower decks.

This picture is a good example of the docking technique we used with the rye loaves. We use a roller with long plastic pins to poke even holes all over the loaf before we load it in the oven.