So, the special bread ovens basically has 2 features that I think make for great bread — it mostly has to do with the crust, so that it’s thick and crunchy and has different shades of brown layers, and in turn it’ll encase a crumb that forms well and holds its structure (it won’t permanently squish like supermarket bread). 1 - You can press a button that sends steam onto the bread when you put it in so that the dough can expand more comfortably early in the baking without setting, and the moisture causes the starch to gelatinize and dry out nicely as it bakes more. It’s steamed again halfway through to encourage that even more. You can try to approximate this at home with spray bottle or a pan of hot water in the oven, but it’s not quite the same. 2- Bread ovens have great heat transfer through convection, conductions, and radiation. The bread is baked directly on the hearth stone, so it’s a more even, intense heat that the bread is exposed to (as opposed to a conventional oven with hot spots and heat loss when opened). In a masonry oven, the air temp will be about 460, and the high quantity of radiant heat from the surface temperature in the oven will also kick in (which is usually about 100F hotter than in a normal oven). The crust will form relatively quickly from the heat, but it won’t dry out as quickly b/c of the high oven humidity.

Hope that makes sense… Me sleepy…

So why do baguettes need speical ovens? Just to bake at higher temps, or is there something else?

…which is why I’m grateful that Susan has pointed me in the direction of TJ’s. I’ll make sure to check there next time, b/c as good as the buns were, sometimes I really, really just want to buy and eat! Thanks, Susan!

Aaron - Thanks! Yeah, they held up nicely… and for lunch today, we’re going to see how they go with tuna burgers!