[Sca-cooks] Getting bread into the oven

[David Friedman]

I've been experimenting with the baking technique in _Artisan Bread 
in Five Minutes a Day_, recommended to me Vis and Mara. The basic 
idea is that you make a large amount of a rather wet dough, let it 
rise about two hours, then refrigerate it. When you want bread, you 
pull off a chunk, shape it, let it sit for half an hour or so, and 
bake it. So far it seems to work--my first experiment used their 
technique on my standard sourdough bread, something they don't have. 
I have a batch of rye in the refrigerator at the moment.

One thing that struck me about their instructions and some others is 
that they let the dough rise on a bread peel, a paddle shaped board, 
with corn flour under the dough to keep it from sticking, then slide 
the dough from that into the oven, often onto a hot baking stone. I'm 
not sure what the point of that somewhat elaborate procedure is. Why 
not have the dough rising on a cookie sheet or equivalent, something 
that can go into the oven, then put it in? If you are using a baking 
stone, you presumably don't get the full effect, since the cookie 
sheet is between the stone and the bread--but a cookie sheet is metal 
and thin, so I wouldn't expect it to make much difference.

Can anyone more familiar with bread baking explain?
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com