September 22, 2022 - 10:37am
How much flour for a 5 quart Dutch oven
I have a 5 quart cast iron Dutch oven with lid and I am interested in baking some no-knead artesian bread. Could anyone tell me the minimum and maximum amounts of flour that works with a 5 qt Dutch oven? Most of the recipes I find just say to use a Dutch oven without indicating what is the best size for the amount of flour the recipe calls for.
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The best answer would be for you to try a recipe that uses 600 grams of flour. Once baked, you will be able to adjust your recipe to increase the amount of flour, say by increasing by 10%, so you would then have 660 grams of flour. Just don't forget to increase all the rest of the ingredients by 10%.
And of course it also depends on the flours you are using. Say 60% white and 40% brown/rye.
So use your favorite recipe and play with it.
5Qt DO is small. Calculate about 5 Qt of your DO volume per each lb of flour in bread.
So, the minimum is up to you, but the maximum would be 1 lb of flour in a round loaf of white bread with a relatively light crumb, not too heavy or dense.
This is how a no-knead loaf from less than 1lb of flour looks in a 7Qt Dutch oven. Bigger DOs are easier to deal with, but I am sure you will be happy with your bread in your DO as well.
I have a couple 4 qt Lodge Combo-cookers I use for bread baking. The bread I bake in them most often has 1000g of flour (2.2lbs), and I divide it roughly into two equal pieces for final shaping, proofing and baking. So, my answer would be "500-700g of flour."
David