Baking bread with a lot of steam

I made spicy raisin loaf using sourdough starter discard. Thought of trying another way to bake it to see if I can get easily a better result. It worked, the bread rises well and have the beautiful cracked top, without much effort.

For the loaf, I add a lot of raisin into sourdough discard, season with a big pinch of salt, a lot of mix spices (freshly grounded cardamon, caraway and cinnamon powder etc). Pour mixture into lined loaf tin, wrap in plastic bag and rest for a couple hours, for the raisin to soften.

In a cold oven, add a tray of around 150ml boiling water at the bottom rack, place loaf tin on the rack above, turn to 200˚C and set time for the normal baking time for that size loaf plus 8 more minutes, the time normally for heating up the oven, around 28 minutes for this loaf. 

With the steam inside and the loaf warming up  slowly without the top dried up by high heat, the bread rises gradually and form the crack by its own force. Beautiful tasty fluffy bread.