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I have baked about 60 loaves of bread so far and the 2 dutch ovens I have been using are in desperate need of re-seasoning. As anyone had any success seasoning their cast iron dutch ovens so they don't smoke and set off the fire alarm each time you use it?

I am familiar with the different smoke points and how the general process works. If you usually use your dutch oven at 450F, pick an oil with a higher smoke point, bake for an hour at a temperature higher than the smoke point, cool, repeat for however many layers you want.

My problem is that when I bake artisan bread, I pre-heat the oven and dutch oven to 500F (about the maximum of my oven) and then drop the temp when bread is the oven. So I can't oil it with an oil with a higher smoke point and go beyond that point so it doesn't smoke when I use it at a lower temperature simply because my oven can't heat high enough. Has anyone figured out a successful way to bake with the dutch oven and not set off the smoke alarm?

I am looking for a simple bread machine recipe that yields a 2 pound loaf. I don't bake in my bread maker so the dough needs to be a ball and not a gooey mess like I made yesterday lol! Right before the second proof I remove the dough ball and put in my pan. This is for my children, so it just needs a simple recipe... the flour i am using is the king Arthur's whole wheat flour. It has a 14% protein. If you have the recipe in grams or weight that would be awesome, I typically make my other breads by weight.

My standard sourdough workflow is bulk ferment/scale/bench rest/shape/ambient proof/retard/bake.

The question is how much ambient proof? Many do none. I have been dabbling with some, based on aliquot jar measurements.

So I did a little experiment and took a dough that had had 20% bulk increase. Then I set up the aliquot jar for the bench rest and ambient proof. One loaf got 25% increase in about 1 hour and the other loaf got 50% over about 1hr 40min.

When baked there was an obvious difference in height between the two loaves:

emmer2.jpg

The loaf on the left had a height of 102mm and the one on the right had a height of 90mm - quite a difference.

The loaf on the left was the one with the shorter ambient proof. I guess the next step would be to compare zero ambient proof with the 25% AP. I might run this as a future experiment, but at least in this instance, the 25% figure looks good.

Crumb shot of taller (left hand) loaf:

emmer3.jpg

And crumb shot of the not so tall  (right hand) loaf:

Some bake details:

• PFF 10%
• Flour excl levain 12.5% Emmer, 7.5% Rye, 1% malt, rest BF
• Hydration 77%
• Bulk temp 25C
• Bulk time 2hrs 40min
• Ambient temp for pre-retard AP 25C

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