My first attempt in baking bread using a cast-iron lidded pan in a small electrical oven yields a pleasant, well-formed bread.
Being from Holland, I’ve always been curious about baking in a Dutch oven – especially as it’s quite unfamiliar to me. I have never used my cast-iron stewing pan inside the oven, although it is small enough to fit inside. I’ve read that the original cast-iron Dutch Oven, a stewing pan like mine, wasn’t even Dutch but Swedish ironware, adding to even more confusion. But now that bread baking is getting a lot of attention I come across scores of bread bakers that are using this method with great enthusiasm and success, and I thought I’d give it a try as well.
What happens when using a pan in baking bread is that the moisture is retained inside the pan because of the lid. This helps the baking bread to rise longer, as the forming of a crust is delayed, and this gives the bread a nice open crumb. In a commercial bread baking oven, steam is injected in a controlled manner to do the same, and at home you can add steam and mimic a much more expensive oven that you really have in various more or less creative ways. But my oven is *tiny*. There is little room for extra trays to make steam, and no way to hold the steam inside. It does have the ability to get really, really hot, and I do use a baking stone in it, which improves it greatly. I also have a cast-iron pan that fits inside.
So here’s how I fared.
recipe: Pecan bread baked in a Dutch Oven
This amount is for one 400gr round loaf and a 20 cm un-enamelled lidded cast-iron pan
120 ml water 350 gr white bread mix flour (with dry yeast)
pinch of salt
1 tablesp olive oil 50 gr pecans
1 egg
Mixing up the dough; first rise
(numbers in the text refer to the pictures below)
Put the luke-warm water and the olive oil in a plastic container that has a lid. Combine the salt with the flour. Add a bit of the flour and stir with one hand to dissolve it all without lumps. Then quickly stir in the rest of the flour, using one hand, and keep stirring vigorously till the dough starts to feel elastic and pulls awasy from the sides of the container. Done; put aside with the lid on but not closed – the air formed by the yeast can still escape. Put it somewhere not neccessarily warm, and leave it for 6 hours. It’ll become bubbly and three or four times larger in size (1).
Note: I’ve used two batches of slow-risen dough, made from a white bread flour with yeast pre-added. The first batch was started the day before I baked, and so was left to rise and bubble at a cool room temperature for 24 hours – way longer than the package prescribes. The other batch only got 6 hours to form bubbles. I did this because I don’t like the way dough feels and handles when it’s left to rise overnight (but it has grown much more interesting yeast-wise); and by wrapping it in a “shorter” dough, it feels better and handles easier.
Shaping it; second rise
Pull out the dough batches and gently prod the air out of it (2), and knead it into a long strip of dough, about 50 cm long and 2 by 3 cm wide. Mix the egg with a tablespoon water; brush the top of the strip with a bit of the egg wash. Scatter chopped pecans along its length (3).
Gently roll the strip into a spiral (4) and place upon a piece of baking parchment. Brush the top with egg wash, and sprinkle the rest of the pecans on top. Press down a bit to secure them. Cover, make sure there is room for expansion at the top; and leave this to rise for about two hours.
I put the roll of dough inside the outer ring of a springform tin (5) so it could not get wider than the cast iron pan it has to fit into, but I think this is optional.
Baking in a pan!
Pre-heat the oven to about 230°C with the cast-iron pan in it, or even 240°C if your oven can manage that. My pan would only fit when I put it on the lowest slot. As the iron apparently evens out the heat, that didn’t seem to matter – no burnt bottom.
When the oven is hot enough, and the dough has had its time to rise (6), give the roll one more brush-over with the egg wash. Then it’s time for some quick action. Get the hot pan out and put in on a burner to help retain the precious built-up heat. Move the hot lid back into the oven. Lift the dough roll by its parchment and dunk it into the hot pan – paper and all. Put the lid back on, and quickly insert the pan back into the hot oven.
Watch the temperature: return it to about 220°C. Bake for 15 minutes covered with the lid. (This is a bit like an act of faith as you cannot see what’s happening inside: would the nuts burn? would the bottom burn?) Then get the pan out, remove the lid, and return the pan to the oven for 5 minutes more to color the top and make the crust nice and crisp. Then get it out (7), and gently roll the hot bread onto a wire rack, remove the parchment, and leave it to cool off for at least an hour or more.
When I removed the lid after the 15 minutes were up, I was pleasantly surprised that all was still well inside; nothing burned – in fact, the top still looked pale with some brown starting to come up. No picture of that, as I was in some haste ;-) But after its 5 minutes without lid, the top had turned shiny and deep golden brown, and still none of the pecans were burnt. The bread felt light and when it was cooled off sufficiently to be cut (8), it showed a wonderful even crumb, nice and airy, and I liked the thin crust as well. No wonder this method receives such a lot of attention. I think it worked very well with my tiny oven. I think I’ll be trying this some more!
Pecan bread baked in a Dutch Oven
My first attempt in baking bread using a cast-iron lidded pan in a small electrical oven yields a pleasant, well-formed bread.
Being from Holland, I’ve always been curious about baking in a Dutch oven – especially as it’s quite unfamiliar to me. I have never used my cast-iron stewing pan inside the oven, although it is small enough to fit inside. I’ve read that the original cast-iron Dutch Oven, a stewing pan like mine, wasn’t even Dutch but Swedish ironware, adding to even more confusion. But now that bread baking is getting a lot of attention I come across scores of bread bakers that are using this method with great enthusiasm and success, and I thought I’d give it a try as well.
What happens when using a pan in baking bread is that the moisture is retained inside the pan because of the lid. This helps the baking bread to rise longer, as the forming of a crust is delayed, and this gives the bread a nice open crumb. In a commercial bread baking oven, steam is injected in a controlled manner to do the same, and at home you can add steam and mimic a much more expensive oven that you really have in various more or less creative ways. But my oven is *tiny*. There is little room for extra trays to make steam, and no way to hold the steam inside. It does have the ability to get really, really hot, and I do use a baking stone in it, which improves it greatly. I also have a cast-iron pan that fits inside.
So here’s how I fared.
recipe: Pecan bread baked in a Dutch Oven
This amount is for one 400gr round loaf and a 20 cm un-enamelled lidded cast-iron pan
120 ml water
350 gr white bread mix flour (with dry yeast)
pinch of salt
1 tablesp olive oil
50 gr pecans
1 egg
Mixing up the dough; first rise
(numbers in the text refer to the pictures below)
Put the luke-warm water and the olive oil in a plastic container that has a lid. Combine the salt with the flour. Add a bit of the flour and stir with one hand to dissolve it all without lumps. Then quickly stir in the rest of the flour, using one hand, and keep stirring vigorously till the dough starts to feel elastic and pulls awasy from the sides of the container. Done; put aside with the lid on but not closed – the air formed by the yeast can still escape. Put it somewhere not neccessarily warm, and leave it for 6 hours. It’ll become bubbly and three or four times larger in size (1).
Note: I’ve used two batches of slow-risen dough, made from a white bread flour with yeast pre-added. The first batch was started the day before I baked, and so was left to rise and bubble at a cool room temperature for 24 hours – way longer than the package prescribes. The other batch only got 6 hours to form bubbles. I did this because I don’t like the way dough feels and handles when it’s left to rise overnight (but it has grown much more interesting yeast-wise); and by wrapping it in a “shorter” dough, it feels better and handles easier.
Shaping it; second rise
Pull out the dough batches and gently prod the air out of it (2), and knead it into a long strip of dough, about 50 cm long and 2 by 3 cm wide. Mix the egg with a tablespoon water; brush the top of the strip with a bit of the egg wash. Scatter chopped pecans along its length (3).
Gently roll the strip into a spiral (4) and place upon a piece of baking parchment. Brush the top with egg wash, and sprinkle the rest of the pecans on top. Press down a bit to secure them. Cover, make sure there is room for expansion at the top; and leave this to rise for about two hours.
I put the roll of dough inside the outer ring of a springform tin (5) so it could not get wider than the cast iron pan it has to fit into, but I think this is optional.
Baking in a pan!
Pre-heat the oven to about 230°C with the cast-iron pan in it, or even 240°C if your oven can manage that. My pan would only fit when I put it on the lowest slot. As the iron apparently evens out the heat, that didn’t seem to matter – no burnt bottom.
When the oven is hot enough, and the dough has had its time to rise (6), give the roll one more brush-over with the egg wash. Then it’s time for some quick action. Get the hot pan out and put in on a burner to help retain the precious built-up heat. Move the hot lid back into the oven. Lift the dough roll by its parchment and dunk it into the hot pan – paper and all. Put the lid back on, and quickly insert the pan back into the hot oven.
Watch the temperature: return it to about 220°C. Bake for 15 minutes covered with the lid. (This is a bit like an act of faith as you cannot see what’s happening inside: would the nuts burn? would the bottom burn?) Then get the pan out, remove the lid, and return the pan to the oven for 5 minutes more to color the top and make the crust nice and crisp. Then get it out (7), and gently roll the hot bread onto a wire rack, remove the parchment, and leave it to cool off for at least an hour or more.
When I removed the lid after the 15 minutes were up, I was pleasantly surprised that all was still well inside; nothing burned – in fact, the top still looked pale with some brown starting to come up. No picture of that, as I was in some haste ;-) But after its 5 minutes without lid, the top had turned shiny and deep golden brown, and still none of the pecans were burnt. The bread felt light and when it was cooled off sufficiently to be cut (8), it showed a wonderful even crumb, nice and airy, and I liked the thin crust as well. No wonder this method receives such a lot of attention. I think it worked very well with my tiny oven. I think I’ll be trying this some more!
0
in breadDutch oven+pecans
post a commentsave the linkrate as favoriteshare with friends