Getting steam in with your dough is a big deal. Instead of using the dutch oven to bake my loaves, I have a baking steel for high heat transfer and bake under a

Getting steam in with your dough is a big deal. Instead of using the dutch oven to bake my loaves, I have a baking steel for high heat transfer and bake under a stainless steel bowl. The bowl doesn't have the thermal mass that a dutch oven does, but it's a lot easier to put a loaf in the oven, since you're not manipulating a 450F cast iron pot, but instead just peeling the loaf onto the baking steel. The bowl keeps a lot of moisture trapped close to the loaf (sometimes, if I'm feeling frisky I'll spray some extra water in on as I put the whole thing together). What I've found is that the retained moisture inside the bowl setup helps a lot, but it's also relatively easy to burn the bottom of the loaf, as the baking steel can hold a lot of heat (I also have the problem of an older oven with a pretty wide swing in thermostat tolerances)