Bread Maker

Okay so I know that I am a Baking student and I have to take artisan breads next quarter. I love homemade bread but sometimes especially in Indiana it can be a little impractical to try and find a warm place to proof and rest your bread.
I absolutely adore my bread-maker. Today we decided we wanted pizza instead of picking up the phone we made our own. I did break down and use a prepared box of bread mix but they are pre-measured for bread-makers. This makes things nice and they come with yeast already. So I used a sourdough bread and set my bread-maker to dough and it did all the mixing and proofing and kneading. It is a beautiful thing for home made dough. 1hr and 35mins later I had this beautiful dough for pizza.
The next little thing I did do I learned from my baking class. When I heated up the oven I put a Iron cast pan on the bottom rack and let it heat up with the oven. Then when the oven was hot and I put my pizza in I put about a 1 &1/2 cups of water into the pan this allowed for steam to move through the oven. This process we used in the ovens at school. Though the stone ovens at school had a steam button and didnt need the skillet. This steaming allows the crust to stay moist for a bit and then grow hard so the inside of your bread is nice and fluffy while the outside is nice and crisp.
This worked great for the pizza giving it just that nice hard crust but the nice inside that was light and fluffy!! I Highly recommend making your own pizza even if you do the dough by hand try out steaming your oven! Make sure you don't open the oven more then needed, maybe just when the pizza is done! It will help keep the moisture and heat trapped in the oven and help the pizza or bread cook evenly and much better!