Abstract: The invention involves the generation of dry hot steam to be drawn into an oven cooking cavity where the steam is allowed to contact dough pieces on a baking plate in order to bake French bread with a glossy appearance and a hard crust, for example. In one embodiment, the cooking cavity is partitioned in the top thereof to form a steam generating chamber which receives therein a supply of water to convert it into hot steam with the heat from an upper gas burner located beneath the chamber. The upper gas burner and a lower gas burner located beneath the baking plate may be of forced combustion type and a perforated burner tube has provided along the length thereof a flame transmitting member which is divided into a plurality of segments mounted with a proper gap between two adjacent ones thereof to accommodate the thermal expansion of the segmented flame transmitting member and the tube per se.