January 5, 2015 - 9:01am
Dutch oven loaf
have been baking bread quite while at home now almost every other day. I learned a lot from reading this forum. I used to bake bread on stone with 10 minute hotel pan steam method and they come out ok. i started using Dutch oven recently and liked how the crust come out thin and crispy and most important I like the hight of loaf. These are King Arthur special/sir-gal ahead 50/50 water67% salt fresh yeast 3 hour stretch and fold overnight ferment proof 2h Dutch preheated for 40m at 480 bake 30m lI'd on then 10 off
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Well done, I am sure they are as delicious as they look!!
have ti taste great. Well done and happy baking in 2015!
Very nice! I get better oven spring on my DO at 550. one note. On the rack below the DO I have stacked two half sheet pans. This provides an air gap and creates the necessary heat deflection so the bottoms of my loaves do not burn.
Thanks for the tip. Actually I was planning to lower the tem as the bottom of loafs burnt little bit. I put the parchment paper to provent it but did not help. So you are shielding it with aluminum sheet pans? Are you putting the DOs on the pans or just below the reck? is 550 safe for DOs, won't they get burnt. And what size are you using and what are the times you bake the loaf in?
thanks
Ok, to start with, I have cast iron DOs, so I am not worries about the enamel cracking from high temps. 550 is about the limit of where I will take my DOs because I dont want the seasoning to burn off. that is not a safety issue, just a PIA. we can talk more about that later if you like. I have lodge 5 and 7 QT DOs, both work equally well for ~1kg loaves, think tartine or WFSY recipes.
the reason your bottoms are burning is that the bottom of the DO is getting hotter than the top due to the heat source coming from the bottom. this has a lot of parallels with high temp pizza baking as well. My oven setup is as follows
bottom of the oven, sometimes I have a pizza stone or two for thermal mass, this is not needed.
bottom rack, 2 stacked half sheet pans. this creates an air gap. that air gap is the important feature that forces the heat to distribute more evenly in the oven.
next rack up i have my DOs. preheated for about 45-60 minutes. the DO lids on the top rack for preheating.
add the scored loaves to the DO. place the lids on the DO, and let it ride or 20-25 min. turn the temp down to 475 and pull the loaves out of the DO. bake to the desired color, i like another 20 minutes.
does that answer your question?
you can see a picture on my instagram page
http://instagram.com/bensbites/
thanks
I am using same size 7qt and baking 1kg. I have to get another DO as need to bake 6. Want to bake 6 loaves same day. 3 DOs at one time. 3 for my family and 3 for sale so far. guy how tried it fresh willing to pay whatever I ask. He sad he never tasted bread so good during his 10 year in US.
I get cast iron and try your suggestion. See how it'lol work. I do thinks putting pizza stone is good idea as this would take more time and energy to waste.
3 DOs, what size oven do you have? I can only fit 2 DOs in my standard size oven. here is what I do:
I am between jobs, and have been baking bread for friends. I bake 2 loaves at a time. 20 min covered in the DO. then pull them out of the DO and onto the top rack for another 20 minutes while new loaves go into the DO. you will have to tweak the temperatures for your oven. my oven runs a about 25 degrees cool, sometimes. but I know with loaves on the top rack, 470-485 is about perfect.
basically i go with two loaves at a time, and cycle them, so I can have 4 loaves baking at a time.
Ben
and I have on one rack a 3 1/2 Qt plus a 2 1/2 Qt Le Creuset dutch ovens, and a square Le Creuset grill pan that takes up a bit more room than the 31/2 Le Creuset, so it seems to me that three DOs of the appropriate sizes should be able to fit into mine.
Mine weren't burning but I wanted them a bit less done, and tried two things, both of which seemed to help although I've never done an actual comparison. In any case, the first was simply moving the rack up higher, the one my dutch oven is placed on. This worked but made it a bit awkward to remove the lid because it was close to the elements at the top, so I dropped the rack back to the middle and put my pizza stone on the rack below. I assume this blocks a bit of the bottom heat like the sheep pan suggestion.
your pizza stone will provide a fairly high degree of heat deflection, but the air is what made a difference for me. with my pizza stone in place I was still burning my bottoms. once i added the airgap I am getting even temps all the way around. here is an example:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/41207/looking-suggestions
the air gap does not have to come from two sheet pans. you can place something above or below your you current pizza stone
Ciao Kobali,
la tua produzione è molto bella ed invitante.
Ti auguro un felice 2015 ricco di straordinari risultati nell'ambito anche della panificazione.
Anna