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can you post a recipe and technique, including the dutch oven use? i'd love to have some good crusty bread like that at home on the cheap.
Yeah, I've posted it before. It's super easy.
For a loaf of those proportions:
3 cups flour (unbleached white)
2 tsp yeast
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1.5 cups lukewarm water (slightly warmer than the back of your hand).
Stir the flour, salt and yeast together. Add the water and stir with a sturdy spoon (it will get thick and sticky right away). You want a dough that has a little bit of moisture to it but isn't crazy sticky to the touch. If it's too dry (not all the flour is mixing in), add a little water. If it's too wet, add flour.
When you've got the moisture right and it's basically one piece of dough, knead it for a few minutes on a floured surface. Don't overdo it, 3-5 minutes is plenty. You just want to work out any major clumps.
Sprinkle a little flour in the bottom of a container (plastic, glass or metal) put the dough in there, cover the top of the container tightly with saran wrap and let it rise in a reasonably warm space for a couple hours (probably 2 minimum, 3-4 more ideally).
After the dough has risen, take it out and knead it again on a floured surface. Only a few minutes. Then generously coat a cotton kitchen towel with flour and put the dough on it. Generously top the dough with flour and fold the cloth over the top of the dough. Let it rise (this is called the proofing stage) for another ~2 hours (or more if you want).
When it's time to bake, preheat your oven to 500 degrees and toss your dutch oven in there. I use a Lodge brand one that is pretty much identical to Le Creuset as far as I can tell. But I did replace the plastic knob with a metal one so it wouldn't melt. It looks about like this:
When the oven reaches temperature, your dutch oven should be nice and hot. Take it out of the oven, carefully put the whole cloth with the bread in it into the dutch oven. Then gently remove the cloth. Sometimes the best way to do this is to gently flip the dough+cloth over once it's sitting in the dutch oven. I find this is the easiest way not to "deflate" the dough prior to baking (results in airier crumb).
Oh yeah, if you want the top of your bread to have a cool pattern, this is the time to slash it with a knife. You can do an x or a couple lines in a row, or something random. Not too deep, but enough that the slash doesn't immediately close when you remove the knife.
Put the cover back on your dutch oven and stick it back in your regular oven. I don't time my bread anymore so I can't say exactly how long to let it bake, but 20-25 minutes covered is probably a good guess. When you start to see a little color in the dough, remove the cover and bake another 10mins or so.
This seems like a lot of directions but when you get used to the process, the first stage takes maybe 10 minutes including cleanup, and the second stage even less than that.