Gil's LotD

I pulled this recipe from Everyday Dutch Oven. I hadn't cooked it before but decided to give it a shot at my first DOG! I understand it's kind of mean to try something out on strangers but I'll cook what I want to cook, damn it.

My first DOG was composed of a bunch of Omahans camping out in a state park just south of town. I had never been there before and the weather was just fantastic. They had a great little setup with heat tables, tools and plenty of charcoal. Despite all my preparations I still forgot a few things like pliers and plates. Whoops. The people were nice and we had wonderful dutch oven conversation all evening long! I will certainly be returning and will try and bring friends along. I also learned that my dutch oven is actually a deep oven! This would explain my baking variability. I guess I'll have best results with big entrees like soups and roasts. The DOG had plenty of fancy meals and the gauntlet has certainly been thrown down. I'll need to find something big for next month!

The cornbread was mostly a technical success. I had lots of little coals on the bottom and could have probably done with fewer as it was a bit brown on the bottom. It was also pretty moist. The taste was unfortunately really bland. It wasn't all that sweet and the corn kernels were just weird. Honey didn't save the recipe. I don't think I'll be repeating this recipe again.

Absolutely amazing. I'm writing this while waiting for my second batch to ferment. They came out so incredibly well that I couldn't stop thinking about them all day.

I followed The Fresh Loaf's recipe and fermented for 1.5 hours. I also used about a tablespoon of baking soda in my boiling water bath. Shaping the pretzels was pretty much a failure: I probably had dough rolls too fat. I also couldn't figure out how to get the ends to stick together properly. The result of all this is that pretty much all of my pretzels unpretzeled themselves when dunked into the boiling water.

The result was delicious beyond belief. The crust was chewy and slightly tough and had plenty of flavor. The crumb was tasty and actually pretty fluffy due to the thickness of the dough rolls. I'm making my 2nd batch less than 24 hours later and will try some without topping salt to get a better taste of the crust. I'll be making these for a while.

Another recipe from the lovely Dutch Oven Madness. I saw she was interviewed for a podcast by another blogger, I'll have to check that out later.

I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter. However, the dough was still very liquid after adding at least another cup of flour. I took a stab at kneading it anyway, wound up kneading it with the new technique I picked up off the internet. Sorry, I can't find the link at the moment. After 20 minutes of kneading (no joke!) the result was somewhat doughy and I set that to rise. Once it was roughly doubled in size (an hour or two) I tried to cut up the dough to roll it in preparation for the braiding. A combination of a lack of flour on the surface and intoxication made me give up on braiding so I recombined the dough and set it in the dutch oven to rise. I gave it another hour or more and baked it at the prescribed 350. The oven was preheated but the dutch oven was not. In order to get the browned top crust that you see in the picture I let it go for something like 20 minutes over the prescribed 20 minutes. This was not entirely a good idea: the bottom was not burned but charred a bit. I was also checking it every 5 minutes after the first 20 minutes so you could probably set it for 40 minutes and only check it at the end of that.

The end result was technically competent. The crumb was fluffy and moist. Bubbles were present but not super huge. The crumb was composed of thin, fluffy layers which was kind of strange. I didn't spread out the dough but it flattened itself out like that during the cooking. Reading up online it appears that if you fold the boule it creates surface tension that holds the bread in shape. I wasn't a fan of the taste at first: it seemed the seasoning overpowered everything and just didn't go well with the cheese. I wound up eating the entire thing the next day in the afternoon so it grew on me. My father was a fan, if he asks for it again I would redo it.

Today I have made yet another loaf of French bread. I've followed the recipe from Mark's Black Pot pretty faithfully. I would have pictures for this blog of the preparation but it appears the mystery camera decided to not save them.

The night before I prepared as described in Mark's blog post. About 20 hours later I set into making the 2nd part of the dough. I kneaded for maybe 5 minutes which was probably the downfall of this loaf: reading more on the subject it seems that kneading is responsible for the bubbles in the bread. I thought I had a good windowsill-passing dough but it would probably have served me well to knead for maybe 3-5 more minutes. After two hours of raising with no punchdowns I pretty much just plopped the dough into the preheated dutch oven.

For coals, I did something like 12 good coals on bottom and covered the lid in used, tiny coals. After 20 minutes and the start of a brownish, burned tinge on the crust I took off all the lid coals. 20 more minutes were done with just the bottom coals.

The was certainly more flavorful and slightly more fluffy than my attempt at no-knead bread earlier. The crust was darker but only more crunchy near the top. I still am not a fan of the "just flour" taste and combined with my newly gained knowledge on kneading I feel confident enough to take on more flavorful breads.

Another recipe from the excellent Dutch Oven Madness. This recipe uses yeast aggressively and doesn't sit out for too long. My end result was a fluffy, dense and slightly moist crumb and a pale and slightly tough crust (probably not enough coals on top). The technical aspects of the bread were easily enough achieved but I was not a fan of the taste. The combination of the bland taste and density reminded me of dumplings. My mother was a fan. I probably won't make a second attempt except as a topping to beef stew.

One of my noble goals for dutch oven productions is a loaf of fluffy, tasty bread. I plan on eating it warm with butter. This New York Times article was highly recommended by both the Intertubes and family. My results were not very successful.

After about 20 hours of sitting there was not much raising of the dough. At this point I sorta knew it was a failure, however I baked it anyway. I didn't mix the (dry) yeast together very well with the flour and I certainly didn't mix it directly into warm water. I think either would have caused a slightly puffier crumb. Also, while reading up on the internet I read about the importance of transferring relatively undisturbed dough into the pot in order to preserve the internal gas. Apparently punching down too much can be a bad thing.

I forget the coal count I used. The bread came out cooked and a very slightly tough but still pale crust. It would probably have served to put more coals on top and cook covered for 30 minutes. I ran with 15 minutes covered 30 minutes uncovered. The taste was moist and salty but still had the underpinnings of the wonderful French bread taste. I shall continue stabbing at this challenge until I have a satisfactory loaf of bread.