Can you preheat an oven for too long before baking bread?
Preheating longer does not overheat a set oven, but many home ovens overshoot their dial, so a long preheat can leave the cavity hotter than the number suggests. Baking too hot restricts oven spring and can set the crust before the loaf finishes rising, which is why an oven thermometer is worth having. The sweet spot for most freestanding loaves is around 230C (446F).
Answered by Hendrik, The Bread Code
From the book
If you have an extensible dough with high hydration, baking too cold will result in the dough flattening out quite a lot. The gelatinization of the starch is essential for the dough to hold its structure. After conducting several experiments, it seems that my sweet spot for maximum oven spring seems to be at around 230 °C (446 °F). Test the temperature of your oven, because in several cases the displayed temperature might not match the actual temperature of your oven [ 35 ]. Make sure to turn off the fan of your oven. Most home ovens are designed to vent the steam as fast as possible. If you can not turn the fan off, consider using a Dutch oven.
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