Creating Insane Oven Spring by steaming your Sourdough

In this video I am showing you how you can maximise your sourdough oven spring at home by applying lots and lots of steam while baking. Proper steaming is essential to allow the dough to properly increase in size in the oven. This method has created me superb amounts of oven spring. During the first stages of the bake you want to prevent the Maillard reaction from creating a crust on top of your dough. The crust blocks oven spring. A lack of steam is typically visible by having large pockets of air towards the top part of your dough. More and more pressure is created during the bake until the alveoli collapse and create large holes. In this tutorial we are using lava rocks and a combination of kitchen towels. This steaming setup creates excellent oven spring in a home oven. Edit: Since making this video I have found another method which creates slightly less steam, but also works very well. I could not notice a major difference. It is easier to do and you can do it without buying additional towels and rocks: https://youtu.be/-iHm0XPAmbQ