Baking in a Dutch oven, steam, and heat safety
Last step, and it's the one where you can genuinely get hurt, so I'm going to slow down here more than I did in some of the other lessons. Not to scare you off. But we're dealing with a cast iron pot that's sat in a 500 degree oven for half an hour, and that earns some respect.
Why a Dutch oven in the first place. Bread wants steam in the early part of the bake. Steam keeps the crust soft long enough for the loaf to rise properly before it sets — harden the crust too early and you get a smaller, tighter loaf that never got to open up. The big fancy bread ovens have steam injectors built in. We don't. A Dutch oven with a lid is our steam injector: the dough bakes in its own trapped moisture, and it works about as well as the real thing.
You don't need a fancy one. Any heavy pot with a lid that can handle high heat works. Mine's a plain enameled one I've had for years.
The steps
Preheat the pot empty, with the oven. Put your Dutch oven, lid on, into the oven while it's still cold, then turn the oven to 500. Let it heat a full 30 minutes after the oven says it's reached temp. This is not optional and it's not a "close enough" situation — a pot that isn't fully hot won't give you the oven spring you want, and your loaf just sits there instead of jumping up like it should.
Getting the dough in. This is the part people get nervous about, and fair enough. Pull the pot out, set it on your stovetop or a trivet, take the lid off and set it somewhere heatproof. Then flip your dough out of the banneton (or bowl, whatever you shaped it in) onto a piece of parchment, score it, and lower it into the pot using the parchment like a sling. Lid back on. Back in the oven.
Use both hands, and use real oven mitts, not a thin towel. That pot is at 500 degrees. Brush a bare forearm against the side of it and you will know about it immediately. I've done it. Once. I don't recommend it.
Bake covered, then uncovered. About 20 minutes with the lid on at 500, then drop the oven to 450 and take the lid off for another 20-25 minutes so the crust can actually brown. That lid coming off is when you get a big rush of steam in your face if you're not careful — tilt it away from you, not toward you.
Elevation note, because it matters here. At our altitude the outside of the loaf can look done — nice and dark — before the inside actually is. I check for doneness with a thermometer through the bottom crust, looking for around 205-210 degrees, rather than trusting color alone. Color lies a little bit up here.
Getting it out, and the hardest rule I own
Lift the loaf out with the parchment, onto a cooling rack, and then — I mean this — leave it alone. Bread keeps cooking inside itself from residual heat for a good while after it comes out of the oven. Cut it hot and the center gums up, looks underbaked even when it isn't, and you've ruined the thing you just spent a day on. I still do this to myself sometimes. Knowing the rule and following it are apparently two different muscles. Wait a full hour, minimum. Two is better.
I baked four loaves in one week a while back, the same week my dad had his first cardiology appointment down in Provo. I wasn't even hungry for bread. I just needed somewhere to put my hands in the evenings while I waited to hear how it went. The folding, the shaping, waiting for the oven to preheat — it gave the evening some shape when I didn't have any other shape to give it. I mention it because bread is like that for me sometimes. It's not really about the bread.
A few plain safety things
- Oven mitts, not towels. Silicone if you've got them; they don't transfer heat as fast.
- Set the hot lid somewhere you won't set it back down on later without thinking. I've grabbed a "cool" lid more than once.
- Keep kids and pets clear of the oven door area during that pot transfer. Elsie knows to stay back at this stage. She wasn't always great about it.
- If your pot has a knob on the lid, check it's oven-safe at 500. Some plastic knobs aren't — they'll melt, or worse.
None of this is complicated once you've done it a couple of times. The first time is the nerve-wracking one.
Before next time: bake one loaf start to finish and actually let it sit the full hour before you cut in, even if it's hard. I want to hear how the crust turned out at that temp in your oven — every oven runs a little different.
- J