Dutch Oven Bread

Do any of you remember that artisan bread article that got passed around a while back (like 2007), the one about baking bread in your dutch oven? It was a New York Times article originally, before it went viral. Well, that was before I was interested in baking any kind of bread much less something in my dutch oven, but a few months ago, my mother gave me a black and white photo copy of the article from The Mother Earth News Guide To Fresh Food All Year. It seemed interesting, but I wasn't quite ready to tackle it then. Well, I decided recently it was time to try it.

Easy, No Knead Crusty Bread

1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting.
You may use white, whole wheat or a combination of the two. [I used whole wheat pastry flour.]
1 1/2 tsp salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran for dusting [I just used my flour.]

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the flour and salt, stirring until blended. The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at least 8 hours, preferably 12 to 18, at warm room temperature about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. The dough is ready when it's surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently shape it into a ball. Generously coat a clean dish towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. Put the seam side of the dough down on the towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another towel and let rise for about 1 to 2 hours. When it's ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least 20 minutes before dough is ready, heat oven to 475 degrees. Put a 6 to 8 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven and lift off the lid. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. The dough will lose its shape a bit in the process, but that's OK. Give the pan a firm shake or two to help distribute the dough evenly, but don't worry if it's not perfect; it will straighten out as it bakes.

5. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15-20 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove the bread form the Dutch oven and let it cool on a rack for at least 1 hour before slicing.

Yield: One 1 1/2 pound loaf.
Adapted from The New York Times


I was skeptical of the recipe, and leery of cooking bread in my dutch oven. However, I'm skeptical no longer. It had a hard crunchy crust and a super soft texture. The flavor was plain, but when the recipe only calls for yeast, water, flour and salt, plain is how it turns out. And, plain isn't always a bad thing.

I think next time I'll experiment with herbs and flavorings, but this is perfect to go with soup or chili (especially since corn bread doesn't work for my allergic little guy). Or, honestly, it's great spread with some butter and enjoyed on its own.

I linked to the Mother Earth article above, but here's the link again. It's very interesting, and contains more info about how this method works.

PB&J and Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil?

In a perfect world, where I have enough hours in the day to tend to my children's needs AND get the laundry done, I would make my own peanut butter, fruit preserves and whole wheat bread. However, since a PB&J sandwich is my new idea of fast food, it's important to have those things on hand in my pantry. I understand that store bought bread (the kind from the bread shelf not the bakery) is going to have to have some kind of preservative in it. Otherwise it's going to spoil pretty fast. And, I understand that for good preserves and peanut butter, you're going to need a good sweetener. However, reading the ingredient labels for these childhood staples is surprising to say the least.

Here's the list for Nature's Own Whitewheat bread (one of the few store shelf breads Jackson can have):

Unbleached enriched wheat flour [flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid (A B vitamin)], water, sugar, fiber (soy fiber and/or cottonseed fiber), wheat gluten, yeast, contains 2% or less of each of the following: calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, vegetable oil (soybean oil or canola oil), salt, soy flour, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl-2-lactylate, monoglycerides, calcium iodate, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, calcium peroxide, datem azodicarbonamide), cultured wheat flour, guar gum, vinegar, ferrous sulfate, thiamin hydrochloride, monocalcium phosphate, yeast food (ammonium sulfate), soy lecithin, 050710

What happened to flour, water and yeast? Yes, that's all you really need for good bread; well, that and a $10,000 professional baker's oven, and a whole lot of time on your hands (i.e. waking up before the roosters). I have a bread machine and a dutch oven, and they serve our purposes just fine. I do not however have enough time (or appropriate morning personality) to bake enough bread to satisfy all of our cinnamon honey toast and pb&j sandwich needs.

Here's the list for regular Skippy peanut butter:

Roasted peanuts, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed, soybean and rapeseed) to prevent separation, salt

Now, this fits in with my new love for anything with five ingredients or less, and it's corn free. However, hydrogenated anything isn't good. The funny thing is that this is our favorite peanut butter brand, and it has a natural version that we LOVE. It tastes the same. Seriously. So, why can't they just go all natural? Get rid of the hydrogenated junk.

On to the J's. Here's the list for Smucker's Concord Grape Jelly (what I used to buy before food allergies and HFCS awareness invaded my life):

Concord grape juice, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, fruit pectin, citric acid, sodium citrate

High fructose corn syrup isn't really a surprise ingredient in this list. However, the main ingredient is, at least to me. The main ingredient in this jelly isn't the fruit it's labeled after, but the juice. So, there's even less nutritional quality to this jelly than you would think from the label.

Now, just switching to organic or 'natural' isn't enough. Most of the preserves and jellies that I've looked at, even the organic ones, list sugar or fruit syrup as the main ingredient. I would personally rather see actual fruit as the main ingredient since that is how I would do it if I made my own. I've got to be careful with all that, though, because Jackson has texture issues with berry seeds or skins.

Organic peanut butter has, up until recently, been something you had to refrigerate and stir (two things that do not go well together), and the flavor just wasn't the same. However, now, there are some really great brands with yummy flavors that provide comforting labels for the ingredient conscious. One of Jackson's favorites is Peanut Butter & Co. Cinnamon Raisin Swirl (I know, he can handle raisins in his peanut butter but not seeds in his jelly. Crazy, right?).

The bread is the tough part. Yes. There are whole wheat versions out there that will have whole wheat flour as the first ingredient, but you're likely still going to see things like sodium stearol lactylate (a dough conditioner) and calcium propionate (a preservative).

Our favorite sandwich bread, Martin's 100% Whole Wheat Potato Bread, has some things in it that I would rather not be there, like soybean oil and those pesky dough conditioners and preservatives. However, it really is the best tasting whole wheat bread out of all those plastic wrapped mass produced loaves. Like 'my kids never noticed when I switched to wheat bread' tasting. So, for now, it's the best option for us. That is unless a bakery decides to open near us or I decide to start waking before dawn and dedicate an entire day to bread production only to watch it mold by the end of the week.

So, this is how we do PB&J in our house. Skippy Natural Peanut Butter, Welch's Natural Spread, and Martin's 100% Whole Wheat Potato Bread.