I’ve had equal success with hot and cold start... but with cold start I do 50 minutes in Dutch oven then 10 -20 with lid off. I believe removing it was the mistake here.
America's Test Kitchen did this experiment a while ago. Some simple yeasted breads actually came out quite well in a cold dutch oven with no preheating, but it only worked with lighter dutch ovens like Le Creuset. When they tried it with the challenger pan like yours it was a failure every time. Weighing ~22 lb of cast iron, that pan just took far too long to heat up properly, it was insulating the bread more than cooking it.
Thanks for sharing. That makes perfect sense. I think the amount of hydration also plays a role in that experiment. A stiffer dough would definitely have done better.
I usually bake 2 loaves in one day. I bake in Le Creuset Dutch oven and I can only fit one in. Same dough, both straight from the fridge. 3:2:1 ratio - in my case 600 flour, 400 water, 200 levain - each loaf. The first one goes on wetted parchment paper into cold Dutch oven and cold oven. Set at 220 C/430F (convection) 40 minutes covered. 10-15 uncovered at 400 F/200C. Second one goes onto hot pot, hot oven, also on wetted parchment, same temp 30 minutes covered, 15 uncovered. Not much difference. Love your videos.
I sometimes fridge or cool cellar proof and bake in an old cast iron pot I inherited. Think of it as an upside down dutch oven with a roundish lid and handle that can't be used the other way up! As a cheat, I would put the entire pot in hot water for 5 to 10 minutes before baking to try and simulate the preheated dutch oven effect. This did improve the spring. This was before I read your blog on where to get stronger flour in Germany and I was using a mixture of 67 percent DM bio 550, 33 percent rye vollkorn, (DM bio RVK) the mixture was always low in gluten and very sticky due to the rye, so normal techniques for shaping and handling did not apply. I needed the tin to stop it becoming a frisbee. Thanks for all the knowledge you share, it has improved my baking tremendously.
When the heating element is on at full throttle, the direct heat from it is amazing. I think that's part of what burned that bottom. I use a cookie sheet on a rack below my dutch oven to help distribute the heat a bit better. This measurably reduces the required heat soak/equilibration time that is usually necessary after the oven is at setpoint, too. I have baked a loaf at ten minutes after it dings ready without any visible difference than waiting thirty or sixty minutes and need to try even shorter. That heat deflector lives in the oven now. I really enjoy your videos, keep 'em coming!
I actually preheat only the lid of my DO and do not preheat the bottom. That way I can turn out the dough without any danger of a burn screaming hot DO. Score the dough then put the hot DO top on and put it all in the oven. Perfect oven spring. Best of both worlds.
It would be very interesting to know what would happen with a third loaf in a cold oven but with all the mistakes of the first loaf corrected: parchment paper to prevent sticking, longer bake time to account for heating up and to avoid "opening to check" where possibly some steam and heat are lost. I suppose it would still be flatter and spread out more than the hot oven bread, but it should be pretty good bread still. I for one would love to see this experiment taken to "completion." :)
The real problem here was use of the dutch oven -- all of that thermal mass is slowing down the heating even more. If you want good results from this method you need to use a *thin* pan. You'll also need to adjust the baking schedule. I've done this and you *can* get a perfectly decent loaf without a pre-heat.
Just got a challenger oven and have been trying baking from cold, and am seeing similar results. Will try again with a pre-heat and compare the difference
Interesting experiment! Although - I would expect that non-preheated oven would require longer initial bake with the lid on. Perhaps some steam has come out while checking? Looking at all the criteria, seems rather conclusive. Like, the dough had time to spread in the unpreheated oven (so I guess yields a flatter loaf).
Yep. You are right. I guess it had the same color/shape after roughly 50 minutes in the non preheated oven. Normally I get there in 25 minutes in the preheated oven.
I agree with this, I use cold oven for baking, and I leave the lid on for around 40 mins, then 20 mins without the lid for color, and 10 extra min with the oven turn off and an open door. Also, I use an enamel pot, which increases in temperature quicker than cast iron.
Mmmmm, I always start with my oven at temp. I use the poor mans Dutch oven method. My bakers math starts with 1000 g of bread flour. I proof over night in my bread pans. I also parchment line my bread pans after spraying lightly with an neutral oil. Keep up you content, its way better than what’s on TV.
Lately I baked from a cold oven. My new bread baker recommended it. The loaf was lower in height but had nice crust and crumb. The loaves baked this way had more smell to them too. I am still learning with this new pan though but even when I baked it too long the bread is ok. One thing that occurred to me as a beginner, when I do not preheat... Now if I take the loaf out of the banneton and it is over proofed or I screwed up some way. If the loaf wont hold a shape, I can put it in a loaf pan and did not waste energy preheating my dutch oven. It seems like I dont have to be as precise with my proofing either, since starting in a cold oven allows the bacteria to be active longer. Another thing, about energy savings. Putting the loaf in then starting the oven... This means no heat escaping when you open the door to lad in your loaf. I've also found the process a lot easier. When I want to bake I throw it in and when its done its done. Preheating means I got to think ahead to start preheating. I also am seeing how early I can shut the oven off, like if I shut it off ten minutes early but leave the bread to keep baking in there
Very helpful observations!! The extended preheat time at a high temp for the Challenger just doesn’t seem efficient to me. Still trying to translate some of these methods to fit my tools & resources.
Heinrich, another question about starter: If I take some of my regularly-fed and active "mother" starter and use some of it to make a 1:5:5 "daughter" in anticipation of tomorrow's bread dough making session. Then I incorporate 100g of that daughter in my 500g dough, what have I really accomplished? Why didn't I just take 100g of mother? Thanks for your excellent series of videos (and your great command of the English language!)
Love these variable videos. If I use a dutch oven, I use cold dutch in hot oven. I usually let my dough rise in the pan on parchment and pop in the oven when proofed so no transfer issues.
I am not only a siurdough bread lover. I am a sauerkraut lover aswell. One of my favourite sandwiches contains of toasted surdough bred with sourkraut. For this i like to reduce some cream into the cooked sauerkraut it makes it very smooth. Then i just put a tablespoon or 3 of the sauerkraut onto the roasted bread, some smoked pork and soe musterd compleats the dish!
I usually proof my boules in a Pyrex dish and bake the loaf in the same Pyrex dish that I proofed it in. Usually I get a good oven spring and crumb from using the Pyrex dish (because I dont have a banneton or a cast iron) so this was suprising how you got somewhat of a disappointing oven spring
Cool! I was wondering how that would work but I was always afraid it would stick to the Pyrex! I use old loaf pans lined with dish cloths instead of bannetons and a pizza stone with a roasting pan as a lid instead of a dutch oven. I'm going to guess that the cold Pyrex in a preheated oven does the same job as the hot cast iron (or my roasting pan lid), just from the bottom instead of the top, in keeping the steam in so that the hard crust doesn't form immediately and the loaf still has some room to expand while it heats up. Have you ever tried covering your bowl?
@@bunhelsingslegacy3549 I think the best way of explaining the Pyrex method is by watching the sourdough bread made by Patrick Ryan. I have had some sticking but placing some parchment paper does well. The Pyrex dish comes with a lid so I spray the loaf and cover, 30-35 minutes in and I remove the lid until the crust is to my liking
@@the_bread_code could be, because I usually do a 65-70% hydration because the flour that I use has around 10-11% protein. The Pyrex dish does absorb heat much quicker than a cast iron does so a long preheating is something I dont necessarily do.
My standard recepie us 700g wheatflour and 300g rye flour, sometimes i include some spelt and whole grain in this mix by taking out same amount of other flour. I usally use 70% hydration. I often bake this as one big loaf
Let me start with saying I really really enjoy your videos. I usually start cold only difference is I do it in a parchment and bring the dough back to room temp about 2 hours on the counter before I want to bake. I get great spring. Usually follow a version of your recipe.
Thank you! Interesting. Have you tried baking directly when the dough is still cold? As far as I can see you get even more oven spring :-). Try proofing for an hour at room temperature, then another 16 hours in the fridge. I have had my best oven spring using that method. The cold dough retains its shape quite well and will then grow upwards in the oven 🙏
@@the_bread_code with a preheated dutch oven & oven yes, but I prefer to start cold on everything. It works just fine if the dough is at room temperature instead of refrigerated. With parchment of course. Its easier to dump the dough and score it in a cold as I don't own a combo cooker or challenger.
Suggestion for another experiment: adding salt directly when mixing the ingredients or waiting until the dough has become more extensible. Manfred, a Swedish baker of German descent said in one of his tutorials, that he and others had tested both ways in Germany, where he worked for years. For sourdough bread they couldn't notice any difference at all. However, waiting to add the salt until you already had been kneeding for some time did have a clear, positive result with enriched doughs (with a lot of butter and sugar).
I would like to see this attempted again, where you don’t damage the bottom crust. There will probably be more spread in the non-preheated version, but losing the bottom crest took away the tension that was helping hold the sides together. You may have had more oven spring than you did in the non-preheated version. It’s likely the preheated version will still win the oven spring battle, but the win may be smaller. We don’t know until you do it without damaging the bottom. Why not just leave the lid off and finish baking it that way, instead of trying to pull it out and put it on a stone?
This is interesting! A while ago I saw a recipe for no-knead bread (made with commercial yeast) that was baked in a Dutch oven from cold and it turned out pretty good!
@@the_bread_code I just looked up the recipe (it's from 10 years ago oops I guess I'm getting old) and the lady bakes it in a casserole dish (starting with the oven off) though I remember I baked it in my dutch oven (23cm) with much success. Here's the video (I'm afraid it's in Spanish but you get the gist) ruclips.net/video/ynvrIIW6S74/видео.html&ab_channel=isasaweis
Such an entertaining video. Love the slow reveal of the hot oven bread, and the jokes when the bread stuck! Been meaning to ask you - do you have a 'probe' type thermometer. 7 deg out of the fridge sounds a bit warm, unless that is your fridge setting. Also, we must start a pass around to get you some new oven gloves! One more one more - my bakers math, assuming you're using 100% hydration levain: ((160/2)+640) / ((160/2)+700+100) * 100 = 81.8%
If we go at 9:09 and rapidly alternate between arrow right and left, we can see that it's literally deflating, and that's the second check. cold cast iron and dough aren't good friends, so it's to be expected that it would need paper(w/e the name is in english) on the bottom. So I think by letting it go covered until it's totally set, with the oven set at an higher temp. And adding paper on the bottom, there is definitly room for improvement I doubt it's ever going to top the hot version tho, especially if we were to do it with the normal setup without a dutch oven.
You've got the Hollock Cave in the cold start bread! Other one looks great, as usual. Hendrik, one thing I would like to ask, by putting your Dutch oven directly on your granite counter top aren't you cooling your dutchy right back down? I see others put their Dutch oven on a wire rack so that the heat doesn't dissipate so rapidly.
Yep. You are right. However - the stone doesn't release the heat that quickly to the DO. It does a little to the bottom, but not that much. If I measure the temperature it is still somewhat similar. But you are right, a cooling rack of course would be better!
I would love to see a testing with clay/stoneware bakers. They often call for no preheat. I picked up a couple at a thrift shop and have yet to bake with it.
@@the_bread_code I just baked a loaf this morning, dough straight out of the fridge, onto baking pan with parchment paper, covered with a glass mixing bowl, into cold oven, at 220c/450f, for 50 minutes covered and about 5 minutes uncovered. If wanting a thicker crust, then, I'd bake it longer with cover off. I was apprehensive but it came out gorgeous!! Great spring, moist and soft on the inside, great crust. Very pleased with the experiment. :) The stoneware/clay next... Also, love your childlike joy for baking--the best kind of attitude:) Aloha, from Hawaii
@@puidemare2337 Have you tried the stoneware bakers yet? I just bought one (unglazed interior) and am told to preheat with oven always but am worried about heating it empty and adding the dough cold. Differing opinions abound with the stoneware and pizza stones.
@@helenjohnson7583 No. I haven't!! I've been really happy with my dutch oven/ glass results, so I haven't gotten around to trying the stoneware. I know what you mean about the differing opinions. The temperature difference thing, right. All my dough recipes are straight out of the fridge, so I'm reluctant to preheat the stoneware. The one I have says to put dough in stoneware and then, bake it. It does say not to preheat empty vessel.
I made the same "hmmm" sounds like in the vid, when slicing the bread or was it tasing, so I did not hear the "hmmmmm" sound form the vid at first ^^. Hmm, butter. (To use a catchphrase from another good channel ^^)
Thanks for the experiment! I have never pre-heated my cast iron pot, and successfully avoided that kind of Frisbee (when I am not over-fermenting 🙄). I think you should give it another try 🤓
You are welcome! I think it might also have been the high hydration that I was using. Maybe this experiment turns out a little different if you use less water in the dough 🤓. How much water are you typically going for?
Would love to know your method and recipe, as I am currently toying with the idea of a cold oven start. I'm testing one out today, as a matter of fact.
@@the_bread_code I often typically use 65-70% of hydration depending on how lazy I am 🙄 I do very often use your recipe on “the last sour dough recipe you ever need”, it is fantastic! Btw I am working on another recipe for sourdough discard, it is a danish rye bread. I will share with you once ready 😊
@@puidemare2337 I was baking hot for years, then I tried cold bake last year with great results. This was not a good example. Try Elaine and foodbod sourdough. She’s on here, has a blog, and in bread groups. I use a metal roasting pan, heats up faster, or clay bakers for cold baking. Also, use parchment paper and bake longer, 40 minutes, the another 10-15 minutes, lid off. This was a poor experiment.
Hallo aus Kanada. Excellent video ...I never thought to compare these two methods. 👌 one question if I may.....The preheated dutch oven still took 1.5 hours to bake?? I usually do about 25 minutes lid on and 15-20 minutes lid off. Second question, how do you like the Challenger Pan as I'm wanting to buy one?? 🤔🤔ok that's two questions from the crazy Czech who lived in Deutschland and now calls Canada home for 37 years. 🤫
Moiiin! Yep. Overall cooking time was almost the same. So no energy savings there. The challenger bread pan is great when baking batards. I'll do a comparison video soon 🤓
@@the_bread_code Hallo aus Kanada. Are you sure you didn't set your oven to 230° Fahrenheit instead of Celsius?? 🤣🤣 but seriously now.....to limit burning on the bottom of the loaf is semolina flour best? How much heat can semolina flour take?....I know it also works on pizza. Would you use the bottom of your Challeger pan for pizza? Thank you!!! I still want that masterclass on Butter Bretzel😍👌
@@johnh9754 yep - semolina flour will do the trick, or another tray below your dutch oven :-). Parchment paper is also a bonus trick that could be used. You could make an american style pizza in it - yep. That would work.
That was sticky 🤣 never had that issue with my dutch oven i guess polenta „flour“ helps 🤔 i’m actually using parchment paper lately to avoid too much charring on the bottom, makes life even easier 👌
I think problem is a cast iron, It’s just too thick to use cold, heats slowly. Thinner pot will allow faster heat transfer, with much better results. Many home bakers use cold oven technique to save electricity with great results, it requires some adjustments; temperature/time with top on etc. No matter what it was fun to watch!
An interesting (and rather messy) experiment - the results speak for themselves! I wonder what the difference would be, if you allowed those uncooked loaves to warm up to room temperature first, and then tried the un-heated vs pre-heated experiment? I suspect that the cold dough imposes a big restriction on the oven spring, but have no experimental reasons to back that idea up. Thanks for the honest video - nice to see things go wrong. One learns more from the mistakes, don't you think?
I've been baking from cold oven successfully. I use a LC dutch oven instead of the challenger pan. I think the latter probably takes longer to heat up, which makes a difference. I bake 30 min from cold and then remove lid for another 25 min.
Very interesting 🤔👏🏼 talking about more experiments have you done any on starters yet? Sometimes I get confused about my timing on making a loaf because I’m not exactly sure when to use my starter , when feeding my starter I always mark a line and add the time it was fed just to make sure I have a strong starter, like if it’s doubled in 6 hours it’s strong ., I will only add it to the autolyse dough when it is doubled but I’m worried about adding it if it’s tripled in size thinking it maybe out of strength because I have left it too long ? Would this affect the rise of my loaf ?
Sorry for being slow to reply here. I'd always use the starter 3-4 hours after feeding. It should have roughly doubled in size. If you wait too long, it might be that you have now too much acid in your starter. It can negatively impact the fermentation process.
Great test! Could you please make a tutorial about caring for you dutch oven? Cleaning seasoning, i really find it confusing. Some ppl don't particularly pay attention. Others say it need seasoning regularly. Thank you🙂😊
@@the_bread_code yeah i know, there began my idea for the video. I just received my Lodge cast iron. It was preseasoned already but if you could cover how often you should season it and what prevents and why we use water and little bit of soaf instead fully washing it etc. Just an idea. I love your channel. Send you message on insta. Two days of binge watching your videos and i learned so many tricks to step up my sourdough game! You are my sourdough guru next to Trevor J.Wilson and Ken Forkish my friend!
@@grzegorzsiwek7209 thank you! For seasoning - whenever you see it might be a little rusty, or you feel it starts to stick too much. It will last for a hundred years. Great choice, much better than enamelled ones.
Interesting experiment. Could you do the same experiment using Pyrex rather than cast iron. Also could you experiment with adding different amounts of gluten to low protein flours, eg 10-11%. Thank you
Thanks! I think the pyrex should be roughly the same. A parchment paper should have helped :-). A stiffer dough with less hydration would likely have performed better in this setup :-)
Interesting comparison. I pre-heat oven and Dutch oven to 450 F for 20 min., use cold dough from frig., spray dough with water, put the hot lid on, put Dutch oven with dough and lid in the over and TURN OFF the oven for the first 25 min. After 25 min, then open the oven and remove lid. Then turn the oven back on to 450 F for another 5 to 10 min. (no lid). Great rise option. Less electricity/gas.
Re the container for the water. The closed caption shows "... it should be made out of glass...". I think you said "... it shouldn't be made out of glass..." Personally, I am uncomfortable with glass, having shattered one when putting very hot water into a cold piece of glass.
Next time you do experiments which could have messy consequences, I'd suggest using parchment paper/greaseproof paper as a liner. I do that when I use dutch ovens because I don't own one myself and don't want anything to stick to the ones I've borrowed (also it's way easier to get the dough into the thing without burning myself, plop dough out of loaf pan onto paper, score it, pick up paper by edges, drop into dutch oven). I also use the stuff to protect my pizza stone when I make a sweet or cheesy sourdough cause they ALWAYS leak and getting that crud off a pizza stone is difficult. A professional sourdough baker I watch uses wheat bran so the loaves slide off the boards they use and into the commercial ovens but I've had better luck dusting the top of the loaf with the bran and then flipping it onto my cutting board that's been dusted generously with whole wheat flour. I use a wooden spatula to straighten out the loaf if it sticks to my board and gets misshapen on the pizza stone but I'm getting better and that doesn't happen often anymore. And I use a silicone baking mat when I do buns cause it's just easier to get them onto the pizza stone that way. I was guessing that the baking time would be difficult to predict when starting with a cold oven. I myself only ever do a half-assed preheat starting with pizza stone and roasting pan in the cold oven. As soon as the oven clicks off after about fifteen or twenty minutes (my oven is old, heats up relatively quickly and clicks quite loudly so I can hear it from the other room where I'm watching sourdough videos), the first loaf gets scored and I slide it off my cutting board onto the pizza stone then flip the roasting pan over it as a lid for the first 30 min (then 10-15 more min uncovered), and as soon as it's done, the second loaf goes in, usually without preheating the lid (it's only a thin enamelled steel pan too chipped to use for roasting anymore). Very rarely do I get any difference between the two loaves, so "preheat your pizza stone at least 45 minutes" is bunk as far as my sourdough is concerned... and I did twice bake with dutch ovens at my in-laws' over Xmas and put the dutch ovens in the cold oven and when it beeped that it was to temperature, in went the loaves. I don't know if dutch ovens take longer to heat than pizza stones (I don't have one of those fancy infrared thermometers) but that oven I was using takes way longer to get to heat than mine does so that probably worked in my favour, the longer the oven takes to heat up, the more time the cast iron has to heat up. I came up with a solution for the "dammit I forgot the salt again" problem I have (a problem I believe you've also mentioned having had in other videos): I mix the flour, starter and water for fermentolyse, then put my bowl back on the scale and sprinkle the salt on top, then it gets another thorough mixing half an hour later before I either set the timer and start doing stretch-folds or put the lid on and shove it in the fridge overnight and let the gluten tend to itself. Life is all about the workarounds, even if you're working around your own forgetfulness/laziness!
Great idea on the parchment paper. I need to try this the next time as well. I also agree with what you observed. 45 minutes is too much. 20-30 minutes will do well for me too. On the forgot the salt. I have been there too 🤣. I made the most beautiful bread and then I forgot the salt. Fail.
Interesting that you preheat your Dutch oven. Would you do the same for any oven vessel? What I've been doing is preheating for 10 minutes at most, but with nothing inside. That may be because the vessel that goes into my oven is the same thing that proofs the dough (pyrex dish with lid, so I flip it over when going in oven if that makes any sense). I would find it too fidgety to be constantly changing the dough vessel! I notice that your dough doesn't spread too far wide while inside your dutch oven - it primarily goes up. When I've used a similarly spacious larger pyrex dish (I have 4 different sizes), I find the dough priorities filling the width of the vessel before going up (now it does go up, but not as significantly as in the more snug sized pyrex dish). Any thoughts on the reasoning for this?
Thanks for the great comment! I think that might be because you could have slightly over-fermented. The dough should normally flatten out a little bit but then come back with better oven spring :-)
My unglazed Romertopf (soaked in water for several minutes first) requires a cold oven to start, and it always seems to make quite acceptable bread. I wonder if the difference in material means different cooking properties?
Do you simply soak the lid in the water? (That is what I saw in instructions for that brand.) Years ago when I tried a clay pot, I thought BOTH pieces were to be soaked in cold water first (so did that) and the bread was wonderful but impossible to separate from the pan... So I got to consume that loaf alone. How do you protect the bread from sticking to the pan?
I noticed in this recipe you used 800g of flour or 400g per loaf, where as with the other masterclass recipe you used 500g per loaf. Which do you prefer?
Thanks for sharing your Experiment! Two questions please. Which type of flower did you use? And where can i buy such kind of dutch oven in germany? Kind regards leo
Hey Leo. The flour I got from "Mulino Padano" and the dutch oven is called "Challenger Breadpan". Also linked it in the description of the video. The flour is amazing, you can live without the dutch oven :-)
The Challenger looks beautiful, but my Lodge combo oven works as well for less than 20% of the price. Not sure if it’s available in Germany at such a low cost.
Another possibility is a cloche made by Netherton foundry in Shropshire UK. A different shape than the Challenger but lighter weight spun iron so it may heat more quickly. Closer to Germany.
I also have great and equal results, cold bake or hot bake. With hot bake, I don’t need to contend with a piping hot Dutch oven. When baking cold, first I prefer metal or steel roasting pans to cast iron. Second, I use parchment paper and I bake 40 minutes, then another 10-15 minutes, lid off.
Experiment idea: combine the cold oven method with the turn-off method. 1. Bake the bread in a cold oven set to 240C. 2. Turn off the oven as soon as it reaches 240C. 3. Leave in the oven for another 25 minutes before removing the lid of the Dutch oven. 4. Bake another 10-20 minutes with lid off. Also, to avoid the downside of the bread flattening out due to baking from cold, you could try putting the bread from the fridge to the freezer for ~15 mins beforehand. Thoughts?
Can you try with a pre-heated oven but with/without a pre-heated dutch oven? I got burnt or almost burnt so many times that i'd love to know that I don't need to pre-heat the ducth oven. Otherwise I need to get those welding gloves like you have.
I think you owe it to yourself to try this again. Here in the US, our former vice president's current policies have driven up the price of energy (and every thing else) so I'm less inclined to heat an empty oven. My solution was to lengthen the initial covered baking time to 40-45 minutes followed by a short 10-15 minute cover-off browning time. Also, I found it helpful to switch to a smaller diameter Dutch oven to limit the Frisbee effect of the cooler initial bake. Oven spring was good, crumb was moist but I did find it necessary to use a parchment paper saddle to prevent the loaf from sticking to the sides.
Hi Hendrik. This morning I used my new Challenger Dutch Oven for the 1st time and I ended up with a frisbee (:-( After watching this excellent video I at least know the issue is not the VERY expensive Challenger as I pre-heated it for 30 minutes Phew! I suspect my problem is the starter as I didn't make a batch for the loaf but just used 100g from my "mother load" Two questions, does using parchment paper affect the spring and I used ice cubes for the moisture, is that OK? Just starting on my sourdough adventure so will keep referring to your brilliant videos for help.
Thank you, Hendrik, good to know! Perhaps lowering the hydration might yield less flat a loaf in the oven that wasn't preheated? Just speculating, no answer required. P.S. Time to grab some steel wool and scrub that oven and the upper tray clean, it appears ... 🙂 I have been there myself. Tedious work, but I feel very virtuous when it's done.
Yep. You are right. I think with lower hydration it would have done better :-). Oh yes - that was quite some work haha. But after seasoning the cast iron always feels like new.
Hey Moritz. Nope. It wouldn't have. I suspect it's because the dough becomes a little too wet. The hot oven helps with creating a crust right away at the bottom of the bread.
If you cook somewhat regularly on cast iron, you'll understand, the only thing I've ever been able to start cold and then get off the pan again is bacon and I think that's mostly because it's mostly fat! I find no matter how seasoned the pan is, just about everything else sticks unless you preheat.
So rewatching almost all your videos. I have a random question for you. When spritzing, would there be any benefit to spritzing all over and then extra spritzing concentration on the score? Maybe I’m just grasping for a magic ticket! Cheers!
Interesting idea. I think it could work :-). However - all the water in general evaporates from the surface. Then it will condense again on the cooler surface. Starting a loop pretty much. Sooooooo. I don't know 🤣
When I made a cool rise bread (Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book) in Corningware or glass with lid, I spooned a liquid onto the top at the score before covering it & placing in the cold oven. The liquid (probably soy milk/water) would work but still sometimes dribbled along the sides and stuck a bit. The trick was in the timing for the final proof as the dough had to expand without hitting the top of the lid inside. The dish was oiled lightly. Those were light multi grain breads and they were excellent!
Hi, why don't you take the water and flour in the starter into your calculation of the hydration level? Wouldn't this be the right way to calculate? The water in the starter will rise the hydration level. What if using a starters with different TA values?
Just a comment, I have progressed to using a steamer, spacer under my loaf in the making, be it in the Dutch oven, or stone plate, I still get crust, I use parchment paper always.
Have you tried baking your sourdough using flour that you mill yourself? Do you think it might make a difference? Will you have to do all of your comparison tests anew using freshly-milled, super fresh flour? BTW I love your "thrifty" German jokes.
Not sure if anyone has tried this, but the dough sample is hit and miss for me. So instead I am now just bulk-fermenting the whole dough in a transparent measuring bowl (a very cheap one I bought a few years ago and accidentally found in a kitchen cupboard). I put the kneeded dough in it, flattened it a bit with wet hands and I'm just waiting until it doubles in volume.
@@the_bread_code I usually make no-knead bread, so haven't tried that (I imagine it is possible, the bowl is wide enough for it). But bulk fermentation has proven to be my sourdough-nightmare so far, and I"m already glad it works this way!
I never preheat my dutch oven vessel, but I do preheat the oven itself. I get great spring with dough fresh from the fridge. I'm unclear whether you put the cold dutch oven into a cold oven?
Dutch oven yep. For the open steam oven, I like to place another tray on top of the bread while it bakes. It helps a lot to keep the top part of the bread colder. No crust forms and you have more oven spring.
Hey Seraphinia. I have a basic one at home from Bosch. I had this one in my 2nd flat in Dusseldorf when I was still commuting: amzn.to/3bQZQaY. It's great, but you would also need a dutch oven. For a small oven a dutch oven is really good, else you are too close to the heating elements :-)
@@the_bread_code Thanks! I already have a dutch oven, so I can protect it from direct heat until the last moment. I'll take a look at the link provided.
To me it looks like the 'no preheat' bread just over proofed since it took longer to warm up in the oven. I bet that if you gave it 10 minutes less proofing it would look the same as the preheated one.
Cool. I like experiments! Do you think the breads would be similar (minus the bottom crust) if you had used a pot with less room for spreading of the dough? Also, do you think the opening of the lid way too early had much effect on the result?
Hey Amund. Excellent questions. On the first question - interesting idea. That would be worth trying 🤓. On the 2nd question - nope - it was already too flat then. I really think high heat helps with retaining the shape. I have one more experiment planned on this 🤓
Isn't it true, that bacteria start dying at roughly 100°C? I wonder if the bacteria explode into bigger bubbles of gas with higher temperature. But talking logic, I assume lower heat doesn't reach the core of the dough quick enough. So the inner core has more time to push towards the sides, creating the UFO. On that thought, is there a way to inject the heat into the dough quicker? I'm thinking infra red. Some ovens have the infra red function. It should basically nuke the dough pretty quick, giving the dough core less time to push its sides. Who knows, maybe the bread turns out to be shaped like a football.
![[Limbus Company - PV] Chapter.7 - Oblivion](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VUpkXPkvoxU/mqdefault.jpg)
"you random German"? That made me laugh out loud!
🤣
I’ve had equal success with hot and cold start... but with cold start I do 50 minutes in Dutch oven then 10 -20 with lid off. I believe removing it was the mistake here.
America's Test Kitchen did this experiment a while ago. Some simple yeasted breads actually came out quite well in a cold dutch oven with no preheating, but it only worked with lighter dutch ovens like Le Creuset. When they tried it with the challenger pan like yours it was a failure every time. Weighing ~22 lb of cast iron, that pan just took far too long to heat up properly, it was insulating the bread more than cooking it.
Thanks for sharing. That makes perfect sense. I think the amount of hydration also plays a role in that experiment. A stiffer dough would definitely have done better.
Also drowning the dough in water didn`t help.
Using parchment paper might have prevented that!!!
I'm really glad you do these experiments for me, so that I can get right to the good stuff! 😊
I usually bake 2 loaves in one day. I bake in Le Creuset Dutch oven and I can only fit one in. Same dough, both straight from the fridge. 3:2:1 ratio - in my case 600 flour, 400 water, 200 levain - each loaf.
The first one goes on wetted parchment paper into cold Dutch oven and cold oven. Set at 220 C/430F (convection) 40 minutes covered. 10-15 uncovered at 400 F/200C.
Second one goes onto hot pot, hot oven, also on wetted parchment, same temp 30 minutes covered, 15 uncovered.
Not much difference.
Love your videos.
Hey Darina. Great idea to use the combo of non preheated with the preheated oven. I will try that. Thanks a lot!
Do you start the timer on cold or when it has reached 220C for the 40minutes.? Thanks for the other info.
I sometimes fridge or cool cellar proof and bake in an old cast iron pot I inherited. Think of it as an upside down dutch oven with a roundish lid and handle that can't be used the other way up! As a cheat, I would put the entire pot in hot water for 5 to 10 minutes before baking to try and simulate the preheated dutch oven effect. This did improve the spring. This was before I read your blog on where to get stronger flour in Germany and I was using a mixture of 67 percent DM bio 550, 33 percent rye vollkorn, (DM bio RVK) the mixture was always low in gluten and very sticky due to the rye, so normal techniques for shaping and handling did not apply. I needed the tin to stop it becoming a frisbee. Thanks for all the knowledge you share, it has improved my baking tremendously.
When the heating element is on at full throttle, the direct heat from it is amazing. I think that's part of what burned that bottom. I use a cookie sheet on a rack below my dutch oven to help distribute the heat a bit better. This measurably reduces the required heat soak/equilibration time that is usually necessary after the oven is at setpoint, too. I have baked a loaf at ten minutes after it dings ready without any visible difference than waiting thirty or sixty minutes and need to try even shorter. That heat deflector lives in the oven now. I really enjoy your videos, keep 'em coming!
Great idea. The heat deflector can do wonders. I love that technique as well. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, bottom heat deflector ~ Very good idea.
I actually preheat only the lid of my DO and do not preheat the bottom. That way I can turn out the dough without any danger of a burn screaming hot DO. Score the dough then put the hot DO top on and put it all in the oven. Perfect oven spring. Best of both worlds.
It would be very interesting to know what would happen with a third loaf in a cold oven but with all the mistakes of the first loaf corrected: parchment paper to prevent sticking, longer bake time to account for heating up and to avoid "opening to check" where possibly some steam and heat are lost. I suppose it would still be flatter and spread out more than the hot oven bread, but it should be pretty good bread still.
I for one would love to see this experiment taken to "completion." :)
The real problem here was use of the dutch oven -- all of that thermal mass is slowing down the heating even more. If you want good results from this method you need to use a *thin* pan. You'll also need to adjust the baking schedule. I've done this and you *can* get a perfectly decent loaf without a pre-heat.
After multiple pancake loaves I finally got two good ones! Owe it all to you and your chart😆
Just got a challenger oven and have been trying baking from cold, and am seeing similar results. Will try again with a pre-heat and compare the difference
Interesting experiment! Although - I would expect that non-preheated oven would require longer initial bake with the lid on. Perhaps some steam has come out while checking? Looking at all the criteria, seems rather conclusive. Like, the dough had time to spread in the unpreheated oven (so I guess yields a flatter loaf).
Yep. You are right. I guess it had the same color/shape after roughly 50 minutes in the non preheated oven. Normally I get there in 25 minutes in the preheated oven.
I agree with this, I use cold oven for baking, and I leave the lid on for around 40 mins, then 20 mins without the lid for color, and 10 extra min with the oven turn off and an open door. Also, I use an enamel pot, which increases in temperature quicker than cast iron.
Mmmmm, I always start with my oven at temp. I use the poor mans Dutch oven method. My bakers math starts with 1000 g of bread flour. I proof over night in my bread pans. I also parchment line my bread pans after spraying lightly with an neutral oil. Keep up you content, its way better than what’s on TV.
Great idea too and very simple and efficient process. Perfect. Engineer approves 🤓
Lately I baked from a cold oven. My new bread baker recommended it. The loaf was lower in height but had nice crust and crumb. The loaves baked this way had more smell to them too. I am still learning with this new pan though but even when I baked it too long the bread is ok.
One thing that occurred to me as a beginner, when I do not preheat... Now if I take the loaf out of the banneton and it is over proofed or I screwed up some way. If the loaf wont hold a shape, I can put it in a loaf pan and did not waste energy preheating my dutch oven. It seems like I dont have to be as precise with my proofing either, since starting in a cold oven allows the bacteria to be active longer. Another thing, about energy savings. Putting the loaf in then starting the oven... This means no heat escaping when you open the door to lad in your loaf. I've also found the process a lot easier. When I want to bake I throw it in and when its done its done. Preheating means I got to think ahead to start preheating. I also am seeing how early I can shut the oven off, like if I shut it off ten minutes early but leave the bread to keep baking in there
Very helpful observations!! The extended preheat time at a high temp for the Challenger just doesn’t seem efficient to me. Still trying to translate some of these methods to fit my tools & resources.
Heinrich, another question about starter: If I take some of my regularly-fed and active "mother" starter and use some of it to make a 1:5:5 "daughter" in anticipation of tomorrow's bread dough making session. Then I incorporate 100g of that daughter in my 500g dough, what have I really accomplished? Why didn't I just take 100g of mother?
Thanks for your excellent series of videos (and your great command of the English language!)
I am so glad I found this channel. Very informative and love your humor. My bread is looking better each try.
Love these variable videos. If I use a dutch oven, I use cold dutch in hot oven. I usually let my dough rise in the pan on parchment and pop in the oven when proofed so no transfer issues.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Would you say the breads are a little flat?
I am not only a siurdough bread lover. I am a sauerkraut lover aswell. One of my favourite sandwiches contains of toasted surdough bred with sourkraut. For this i like to reduce some cream into the cooked sauerkraut it makes it very smooth. Then i just put a tablespoon or 3 of the sauerkraut onto the roasted bread, some smoked pork and soe musterd compleats the dish!
I usually proof my boules in a Pyrex dish and bake the loaf in the same Pyrex dish that I proofed it in. Usually I get a good oven spring and crumb from using the Pyrex dish (because I dont have a banneton or a cast iron) so this was suprising how you got somewhat of a disappointing oven spring
Cool! I was wondering how that would work but I was always afraid it would stick to the Pyrex! I use old loaf pans lined with dish cloths instead of bannetons and a pizza stone with a roasting pan as a lid instead of a dutch oven. I'm going to guess that the cold Pyrex in a preheated oven does the same job as the hot cast iron (or my roasting pan lid), just from the bottom instead of the top, in keeping the steam in so that the hard crust doesn't form immediately and the loaf still has some room to expand while it heats up. Have you ever tried covering your bowl?
@@bunhelsingslegacy3549 I think the best way of explaining the Pyrex method is by watching the sourdough bread made by Patrick Ryan. I have had some sticking but placing some parchment paper does well. The Pyrex dish comes with a lid so I spray the loaf and cover, 30-35 minutes in and I remove the lid until the crust is to my liking
@@bunhelsingslegacy3549 m.ruclips.net/video/2FVfJTGpXnU/видео.html
this is the video that uses the Pyrex dish by Patrick Ryan
Could it be that in general I have been using a relatively wet dough with high hydration?
@@the_bread_code could be, because I usually do a 65-70% hydration because the flour that I use has around 10-11% protein. The Pyrex dish does absorb heat much quicker than a cast iron does so a long preheating is something I dont necessarily do.
My standard recepie us 700g wheatflour and 300g rye flour, sometimes i include some spelt and whole grain in this mix by taking out same amount of other flour. I usally use 70% hydration. I often bake this as one big loaf
I love the wheat/rye mix. It's a great combination. You won't get as much oven spring, but surely it is very delicious.
@@the_bread_code you rigt, nit as good oven sprint than bread with higer gluten, but i dont mind when the tsste is so delicious
Let me start with saying I really really enjoy your videos.
I usually start cold only difference is I do it in a parchment and bring the dough back to room temp about 2 hours on the counter before I want to bake. I get great spring. Usually follow a version of your recipe.
Thank you! Interesting. Have you tried baking directly when the dough is still cold? As far as I can see you get even more oven spring :-). Try proofing for an hour at room temperature, then another 16 hours in the fridge. I have had my best oven spring using that method. The cold dough retains its shape quite well and will then grow upwards in the oven 🙏
@@the_bread_code with a preheated dutch oven & oven yes, but I prefer to start cold on everything. It works just fine if the dough is at room temperature instead of refrigerated. With parchment of course. Its easier to dump the dough and score it in a cold as I don't own a combo cooker or challenger.
Do you add the steam as usual, as well?
@@ExpC07 no just straight dough. I have not tried to add steam inside the dutch oven.
@@rrrrr5102006 thanks! I will try this 😊
Suggestion for another experiment: adding salt directly when mixing the ingredients or waiting until the dough has become more extensible. Manfred, a Swedish baker of German descent said in one of his tutorials, that he and others had tested both ways in Germany, where he worked for years. For sourdough bread they couldn't notice any difference at all. However, waiting to add the salt until you already had been kneeding for some time did have a clear, positive result with enriched doughs (with a lot of butter and sugar).
Interesting idea. Yep. I took a note. Thanks!
You truly enjoy the baking...Good to be okay to laugh at oneself...
I would like to see this attempted again, where you don’t damage the bottom crust. There will probably be more spread in the non-preheated version, but losing the bottom crest took away the tension that was helping hold the sides together. You may have had more oven spring than you did in the non-preheated version. It’s likely the preheated version will still win the oven spring battle, but the win may be smaller. We don’t know until you do it without damaging the bottom. Why not just leave the lid off and finish baking it that way, instead of trying to pull it out and put it on a stone?
This is interesting! A while ago I saw a recipe for no-knead bread (made with commercial yeast) that was baked in a Dutch oven from cold and it turned out pretty good!
Interesting. Thanks for sharing! How large was the dutch oven?
@@the_bread_code I just looked up the recipe (it's from 10 years ago oops I guess I'm getting old) and the lady bakes it in a casserole dish (starting with the oven off) though I remember I baked it in my dutch oven (23cm) with much success. Here's the video (I'm afraid it's in Spanish but you get the gist) ruclips.net/video/ynvrIIW6S74/видео.html&ab_channel=isasaweis
Such an entertaining video. Love the slow reveal of the hot oven bread, and the jokes when the bread stuck!
Been meaning to ask you - do you have a 'probe' type thermometer. 7 deg out of the fridge sounds a bit warm, unless that is your fridge setting.
Also, we must start a pass around to get you some new oven gloves!
One more one more - my bakers math, assuming you're using 100% hydration levain: ((160/2)+640) / ((160/2)+700+100) * 100 = 81.8%
Thanks! Yep. I have noticed - my fridge is kind of unstable. I might need to invest in a new one 🤓
If we go at 9:09 and rapidly alternate between arrow right and left, we can see that it's literally deflating, and that's the second check.
cold cast iron and dough aren't good friends, so it's to be expected that it would need paper(w/e the name is in english) on the bottom.
So I think by letting it go covered until it's totally set, with the oven set at an higher temp. And adding paper on the bottom, there is definitly room for improvement
I doubt it's ever going to top the hot version tho, especially if we were to do it with the normal setup without a dutch oven.
Yep. You are right. That would have been a good way to improve the experiment. Thanks!
You've got the Hollock Cave in the cold start bread! Other one looks great, as usual. Hendrik, one thing I would like to ask, by putting your Dutch oven directly on your granite counter top aren't you cooling your dutchy right back down? I see others put their Dutch oven on a wire rack so that the heat doesn't dissipate so rapidly.
Yep. You are right. However - the stone doesn't release the heat that quickly to the DO. It does a little to the bottom, but not that much. If I measure the temperature it is still somewhat similar. But you are right, a cooling rack of course would be better!
I would love to see a testing with clay/stoneware bakers. They often call for no preheat. I picked up a couple at a thrift shop and have yet to bake with it.
Great idea. I think it would be the same. It would stick, you would need parchment paper :-)
@@the_bread_code I just baked a loaf this morning, dough straight out of the fridge, onto baking pan with parchment paper, covered with a glass mixing bowl, into cold oven, at 220c/450f, for 50 minutes covered and about 5 minutes uncovered. If wanting a thicker crust, then, I'd bake it longer with cover off. I was apprehensive but it came out gorgeous!! Great spring, moist and soft on the inside, great crust. Very pleased with the experiment. :) The stoneware/clay next...
Also, love your childlike joy for baking--the best kind of attitude:)
Aloha, from Hawaii
@@puidemare2337 Have you tried the stoneware bakers yet? I just bought one (unglazed interior) and am told to preheat with oven always but am worried about heating it empty and adding the dough cold. Differing opinions abound with the stoneware and pizza stones.
@@helenjohnson7583 No. I haven't!! I've been really happy with my dutch oven/ glass results, so I haven't gotten around to trying the stoneware. I know what you mean about the differing opinions. The temperature difference thing, right. All my dough recipes are straight out of the fridge, so I'm reluctant to preheat the stoneware. The one I have says to put dough in stoneware and then, bake it. It does say not to preheat empty vessel.
@@the_bread_code I always use parchment paper when baking cold, since the dough is wet and takes longer to sear.
I made the same "hmmm" sounds like in the vid, when slicing the bread or was it tasing, so I did not hear the "hmmmmm" sound form the vid at first ^^.
Hmm, butter. (To use a catchphrase from another good channel ^^)
🤣. Hmmm Butter. Yep.
FWIW, I always place a round of parchment paper in the bottom of my dutch oven before putting in my dough to bake.
Thanks. Yep this would have been better :-)
Ditto. Keeps the pan clean too
Very useful experiment! Thanks.
Thank you! Cheers!
Spouse: “What are you laughing at?”
Me: “A baking video”! 😂😂🤣🤣
Would love to see a comparison between the No Preheat method and the Oven Off method ❤ thanks for the vid once again!
I just did a cold. 45 minutes covered and 15 with the lid removed, perfect
Have you ever tried to make some 100% hidration sourdough and cook it as a regular pancakes? That's a traditional dish in Russia, you should try it!
Thanks for sharing. Definitely a great idea. Which flour are you using then?
Thanks for the experiment! I have never pre-heated my cast iron pot, and successfully avoided that kind of Frisbee (when I am not over-fermenting 🙄). I think you should give it another try 🤓
You are welcome! I think it might also have been the high hydration that I was using. Maybe this experiment turns out a little different if you use less water in the dough 🤓. How much water are you typically going for?
Would love to know your method and recipe, as I am currently toying with the idea of a cold oven start. I'm testing one out today, as a matter of fact.
@@the_bread_code I often typically use 65-70% of hydration depending on how lazy I am 🙄 I do very often use your recipe on “the last sour dough recipe you ever need”, it is fantastic! Btw I am working on another recipe for sourdough discard, it is a danish rye bread. I will share with you once ready 😊
@@puidemare2337 sure, I follow this fantastic recipe! ruclips.net/video/NMglhwp2lNs/видео.html
@@puidemare2337 I was baking hot for years, then I tried cold bake last year with great results. This was not a good example. Try Elaine and foodbod sourdough. She’s on here, has a blog, and in bread groups. I use a metal roasting pan, heats up faster, or clay bakers for cold baking. Also, use parchment paper and bake longer, 40 minutes, the another 10-15 minutes, lid off. This was a poor experiment.
Is that the first time you've sworn on camera! 🤣 10:19
🤣. Yep. I think you got that right.
You seem to have so much fun with these experiments! 🤣
Hallo aus Kanada. Excellent video ...I never thought to compare these two methods. 👌 one question if I may.....The preheated dutch oven still took 1.5 hours to bake?? I usually do about 25 minutes lid on and 15-20 minutes lid off. Second question, how do you like the Challenger Pan as I'm wanting to buy one?? 🤔🤔ok that's two questions from the crazy Czech who lived in Deutschland and now calls Canada home for 37 years. 🤫
Moiiin! Yep. Overall cooking time was almost the same. So no energy savings there. The challenger bread pan is great when baking batards. I'll do a comparison video soon 🤓
@@the_bread_code Hallo aus Kanada. Are you sure you didn't set your oven to 230° Fahrenheit instead of Celsius?? 🤣🤣 but seriously now.....to limit burning on the bottom of the loaf is semolina flour best? How much heat can semolina flour take?....I know it also works on pizza. Would you use the bottom of your Challeger pan for pizza? Thank you!!! I still want that masterclass on Butter Bretzel😍👌
@@johnh9754 yep - semolina flour will do the trick, or another tray below your dutch oven :-). Parchment paper is also a bonus trick that could be used. You could make an american style pizza in it - yep. That would work.
What a fun video! Love the Challenger Dutch oven. Keep making these great videos!
That was sticky 🤣 never had that issue with my dutch oven i guess polenta „flour“ helps 🤔 i’m actually using parchment paper lately to avoid too much charring on the bottom, makes life even easier 👌
Hey Karo. Oh yep, that was sticky 🤣. True that, parchment paper would have helped in that situation. Maybe I am just too cheap to buy it 🤣
@@the_bread_code ein random cheap german :))
I think problem is a cast iron, It’s just too thick to use cold, heats slowly. Thinner pot will allow faster heat transfer, with much better results. Many home bakers use cold oven technique to save electricity with great results, it requires some adjustments; temperature/time with top on etc. No matter what it was fun to watch!
Thanks! Yep. I sink you are right.
An interesting (and rather messy) experiment - the results speak for themselves! I wonder what the difference would be, if you allowed those uncooked loaves to warm up to room temperature first, and then tried the un-heated vs pre-heated experiment? I suspect that the cold dough imposes a big restriction on the oven spring, but have no experimental reasons to back that idea up. Thanks for the honest video - nice to see things go wrong. One learns more from the mistakes, don't you think?
I've been baking from cold oven successfully. I use a LC dutch oven instead of the challenger pan. I think the latter probably takes longer to heat up, which makes a difference. I bake 30 min from cold and then remove lid for another 25 min.
Great point! Does it work with sticky doughs too? Or mostly relatively stiff ones?
@@the_bread_code The one I just baked was 72% hydration.
I put a pan of water in my cold oven. It allowed for more rise/spring time and the crust was blond but easily browned at the end.
Very interesting 🤔👏🏼 talking about more experiments have you done any on starters yet? Sometimes I get confused about my timing on making a loaf because I’m not exactly sure when to use my starter , when feeding my starter I always mark a line and add the time it was fed just to make sure I have a strong starter, like if it’s doubled in 6 hours it’s strong ., I will only add it to the autolyse dough when it is doubled but I’m worried about adding it if it’s tripled in size thinking it maybe out of strength because I have left it too long ? Would this affect the rise of my loaf ?
Sorry for being slow to reply here. I'd always use the starter 3-4 hours after feeding. It should have roughly doubled in size. If you wait too long, it might be that you have now too much acid in your starter. It can negatively impact the fermentation process.
Good thing to have a random German to do al the testing and screw ups, so we don't 'knead' to do it (pun intended) 🙂🙂
You are most welcome :-D
Great test! Could you please make a tutorial about caring for you dutch oven? Cleaning seasoning, i really find it confusing. Some ppl don't particularly pay attention. Others say it need seasoning regularly. Thank you🙂😊
Great idea. I covered a little bit here: ruclips.net/video/lJ38fY3ZEQk/видео.html. Hope that helps. Cheers!
@@the_bread_code yeah i know, there began my idea for the video. I just received my Lodge cast iron. It was preseasoned already but if you could cover how often you should season it and what prevents and why we use water and little bit of soaf instead fully washing it etc.
Just an idea. I love your channel. Send you message on insta. Two days of binge watching your videos and i learned so many tricks to step up my sourdough game!
You are my sourdough guru next to Trevor J.Wilson and Ken Forkish my friend!
@@grzegorzsiwek7209 thank you! For seasoning - whenever you see it might be a little rusty, or you feel it starts to stick too much. It will last for a hundred years. Great choice, much better than enamelled ones.
Will you please give us tips to bake in the Summer months? The processes are so quick that I misjudge each stage. Pretty please and thank you.
Hey Kelly. Yep, new video on the topic coming out very soon!
Thank you so much! You're the best!
Interesting experiment. Could you do the same experiment using Pyrex rather than cast iron. Also could you experiment with adding different amounts of gluten to low protein flours, eg 10-11%. Thank you
Thanks! I think the pyrex should be roughly the same. A parchment paper should have helped :-). A stiffer dough with less hydration would likely have performed better in this setup :-)
Interesting comparison. I pre-heat oven and Dutch oven to 450 F for 20 min., use cold dough from frig., spray dough with water, put the hot lid on, put Dutch oven with dough and lid in the over and TURN OFF the oven for the first 25 min. After 25 min, then open the oven and remove lid. Then turn the oven back on to 450 F for another 5 to 10 min. (no lid). Great rise option. Less electricity/gas.
Re the container for the water. The closed caption shows "... it should be made out of glass...". I think you said "... it shouldn't be made out of glass..." Personally, I am uncomfortable with glass, having shattered one when putting very hot water into a cold piece of glass.
Oh damn auto translation. Yes. It should NOT be out of glas 🤣. You would end up with a shattered bowl there.
9:10 - you can literally see it deflating here. I think keeping it in the oven and actually letting it set, would prove for a better bread.
To release the stuck bread the easy way, would of been to put it back in and bake it some more and it would have released with no problem.
Oh did not know. I will try this the next time this happens (hopefully not) 🤣
Next time you do experiments which could have messy consequences, I'd suggest using parchment paper/greaseproof paper as a liner. I do that when I use dutch ovens because I don't own one myself and don't want anything to stick to the ones I've borrowed (also it's way easier to get the dough into the thing without burning myself, plop dough out of loaf pan onto paper, score it, pick up paper by edges, drop into dutch oven). I also use the stuff to protect my pizza stone when I make a sweet or cheesy sourdough cause they ALWAYS leak and getting that crud off a pizza stone is difficult. A professional sourdough baker I watch uses wheat bran so the loaves slide off the boards they use and into the commercial ovens but I've had better luck dusting the top of the loaf with the bran and then flipping it onto my cutting board that's been dusted generously with whole wheat flour. I use a wooden spatula to straighten out the loaf if it sticks to my board and gets misshapen on the pizza stone but I'm getting better and that doesn't happen often anymore. And I use a silicone baking mat when I do buns cause it's just easier to get them onto the pizza stone that way.
I was guessing that the baking time would be difficult to predict when starting with a cold oven. I myself only ever do a half-assed preheat starting with pizza stone and roasting pan in the cold oven. As soon as the oven clicks off after about fifteen or twenty minutes (my oven is old, heats up relatively quickly and clicks quite loudly so I can hear it from the other room where I'm watching sourdough videos), the first loaf gets scored and I slide it off my cutting board onto the pizza stone then flip the roasting pan over it as a lid for the first 30 min (then 10-15 more min uncovered), and as soon as it's done, the second loaf goes in, usually without preheating the lid (it's only a thin enamelled steel pan too chipped to use for roasting anymore). Very rarely do I get any difference between the two loaves, so "preheat your pizza stone at least 45 minutes" is bunk as far as my sourdough is concerned... and I did twice bake with dutch ovens at my in-laws' over Xmas and put the dutch ovens in the cold oven and when it beeped that it was to temperature, in went the loaves. I don't know if dutch ovens take longer to heat than pizza stones (I don't have one of those fancy infrared thermometers) but that oven I was using takes way longer to get to heat than mine does so that probably worked in my favour, the longer the oven takes to heat up, the more time the cast iron has to heat up.
I came up with a solution for the "dammit I forgot the salt again" problem I have (a problem I believe you've also mentioned having had in other videos): I mix the flour, starter and water for fermentolyse, then put my bowl back on the scale and sprinkle the salt on top, then it gets another thorough mixing half an hour later before I either set the timer and start doing stretch-folds or put the lid on and shove it in the fridge overnight and let the gluten tend to itself. Life is all about the workarounds, even if you're working around your own forgetfulness/laziness!
Great idea on the parchment paper. I need to try this the next time as well.
I also agree with what you observed. 45 minutes is too much. 20-30 minutes will do well for me too.
On the forgot the salt. I have been there too 🤣. I made the most beautiful bread and then I forgot the salt. Fail.
Looks good👍
Thank you!
Your Challenger Bread cast iron is already seasoned. However it is the heat that repels the dough from sticking...
Hedrick , thanks for your amazing video and explanation. If I use my Dutch pan for baking a bread, is it necessary in addition steam? Thanks a lot😊
You are welcome! Yes. That will work!
2:05 Ah, my flour needs a 75% hydration. Got it.
Yeah, I'm saving that graph
Interesting that you preheat your Dutch oven. Would you do the same for any oven vessel? What I've been doing is preheating for 10 minutes at most, but with nothing inside. That may be because the vessel that goes into my oven is the same thing that proofs the dough (pyrex dish with lid, so I flip it over when going in oven if that makes any sense). I would find it too fidgety to be constantly changing the dough vessel!
I notice that your dough doesn't spread too far wide while inside your dutch oven - it primarily goes up. When I've used a similarly spacious larger pyrex dish (I have 4 different sizes), I find the dough priorities filling the width of the vessel before going up (now it does go up, but not as significantly as in the more snug sized pyrex dish). Any thoughts on the reasoning for this?
Thanks for the great comment! I think that might be because you could have slightly over-fermented. The dough should normally flatten out a little bit but then come back with better oven spring :-)
My unglazed Romertopf (soaked in water for several minutes first) requires a cold oven to start, and it always seems to make quite acceptable bread. I wonder if the difference in material means different cooking properties?
Do you simply soak the lid in the water? (That is what I saw in instructions for that brand.) Years ago when I tried a clay pot, I thought BOTH pieces were to be soaked in cold water first (so did that) and the bread was wonderful but impossible to separate from the pan... So I got to consume that loaf alone. How do you protect the bread from sticking to the pan?
I noticed in this recipe you used 800g of flour or 400g per loaf, where as with the other masterclass recipe you used 500g per loaf. Which do you prefer?
Great question! It depends a little bit on the banneton. I noticed that for my bannetons 400g works a little better :)
10:26
That is what happens when you don't oil the container/put some wet oven paper in there!
That was very painful. Agreed. I need to try this with some parchment paper 🤓
Thanks for sharing your Experiment!
Two questions please. Which type of flower did you use? And where can i buy such kind of dutch oven in germany? Kind regards leo
Hey Leo.
The flour I got from "Mulino Padano" and the dutch oven is called "Challenger Breadpan". Also linked it in the description of the video. The flour is amazing, you can live without the dutch oven :-)
The Challenger looks beautiful, but my Lodge combo oven works as well for less than 20% of the price. Not sure if it’s available in Germany at such a low cost.
Another possibility is a cloche made by Netherton foundry in Shropshire UK. A different shape than the Challenger but lighter weight spun iron so it may heat more quickly. Closer to Germany.
I also have great and equal results, cold bake or hot bake. With hot bake, I don’t need to contend with a piping hot Dutch oven. When baking cold, first I prefer metal or steel roasting pans to cast iron. Second, I use parchment paper and I bake 40 minutes, then another 10-15 minutes, lid off.
Experiment idea: combine the cold oven method with the turn-off method.
1. Bake the bread in a cold oven set to 240C.
2. Turn off the oven as soon as it reaches 240C.
3. Leave in the oven for another 25 minutes before removing the lid of the Dutch oven.
4. Bake another 10-20 minutes with lid off.
Also, to avoid the downside of the bread flattening out due to baking from cold, you could try putting the bread from the fridge to the freezer for ~15 mins beforehand.
Thoughts?
The people doing fancy scoring patterns put dough in the freezer for half an hour so the blade slices easily through the skin.
Can you try with a pre-heated oven but with/without a pre-heated dutch oven? I got burnt or almost burnt so many times that i'd love to know that I don't need to pre-heat the ducth oven. Otherwise I need to get those welding gloves like you have.
Interesting idea. It should be slightly better I think. But not on the same level as directly into the hot oven :-)
I think you owe it to yourself to try this again. Here in the US, our former vice president's current policies have driven up the price of energy (and every thing else) so I'm less inclined to heat an empty oven. My solution was to lengthen the initial covered baking time to 40-45 minutes followed by a short 10-15 minute cover-off browning time. Also, I found it helpful to switch to a smaller diameter Dutch oven to limit the Frisbee effect of the cooler initial bake. Oven spring was good, crumb was moist but I did find it necessary to use a parchment paper saddle to prevent the loaf from sticking to the sides.
Did you put your dough (after you added the sourdough) in the fridge or in room temperature (with the 'baby dough') until your it doubled in size?
Fully at room temperature. The fridge would work too if not too cold. It would however take a very long period of time.
hot tip: throw in 2 icecubes in the oven before placing top part of your owen
Best!!!!
Hi Hendrik. This morning I used my new Challenger Dutch Oven for the 1st time and I ended up with a frisbee (:-( After watching this excellent video I at least know the issue is not the VERY expensive Challenger as I pre-heated it for 30 minutes Phew! I suspect my problem is the starter as I didn't make a batch for the loaf but just used 100g from my "mother load" Two questions, does using parchment paper affect the spring and I used ice cubes for the moisture, is that OK? Just starting on my sourdough adventure so will keep referring to your brilliant videos for help.
No need for parchment paper :-). The problem is 99% your fermentation. For oven spring everything has to be done exactly on point.
Thank you, Hendrik, good to know! Perhaps lowering the hydration might yield less flat a loaf in the oven that wasn't preheated? Just speculating, no answer required.
P.S. Time to grab some steel wool and scrub that oven and the upper tray clean, it appears ... 🙂 I have been there myself. Tedious work, but I feel very virtuous when it's done.
Yep. You are right. I think with lower hydration it would have done better :-).
Oh yes - that was quite some work haha. But after seasoning the cast iron always feels like new.
Would the second loaf have come off the cast iron at half time, if you wanted?
Hey Moritz. Nope. It wouldn't have. I suspect it's because the dough becomes a little too wet. The hot oven helps with creating a crust right away at the bottom of the bread.
If you cook somewhat regularly on cast iron, you'll understand, the only thing I've ever been able to start cold and then get off the pan again is bacon and I think that's mostly because it's mostly fat! I find no matter how seasoned the pan is, just about everything else sticks unless you preheat.
I waited instead of answering the survey and he told me anyway. I made the right choice
Haha. Thanks! Good things come to those who wait 🤣
10:20 Did I just hear a colourful word 😳🤣❤
Do your experiment again but don’t handle the first loaf so freakin’ much!! 😆
Was the experiment on a cold vs hot Dutch oven? Or was the main oven also cold?
Same for the oven 👍
@@the_bread_code Thanks
So rewatching almost all your videos. I have a random question for you. When spritzing, would there be any benefit to spritzing all over and then extra spritzing concentration on the score? Maybe I’m just grasping for a magic ticket! Cheers!
Interesting idea. I think it could work :-). However - all the water in general evaporates from the surface. Then it will condense again on the cooler surface. Starting a loop pretty much. Sooooooo. I don't know 🤣
@@the_bread_code Aaahhhh the sourdough rabbit hole!!! Thanks for the explanation!
When I made a cool rise bread (Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book) in Corningware or glass with lid, I spooned a liquid onto the top at the score before covering it & placing in the cold oven. The liquid (probably soy milk/water) would work but still sometimes dribbled along the sides and stuck a bit. The trick was in the timing for the final proof as the dough had to expand without hitting the top of the lid inside. The dish was oiled lightly. Those were light multi grain breads and they were excellent!
Hi,
why don't you take the water and flour in the starter into your calculation of the hydration level? Wouldn't this be the right way to calculate? The water in the starter will rise the hydration level. What if using a starters with different TA values?
Hey. Excellent question. You are right. However, bakers like to simplify the math a little bit. So the recipes already account for that.
Just a comment, I have progressed to using a steamer, spacer under my loaf in the making, be it in the Dutch oven, or stone plate, I still get crust, I use parchment paper always.
Have you tried baking your sourdough using flour that you mill yourself? Do you think it might make a difference? Will you have to do all of your comparison tests anew using freshly-milled, super fresh flour? BTW I love your "thrifty" German jokes.
Not sure if anyone has tried this, but the dough sample is hit and miss for me. So instead I am now just bulk-fermenting the whole dough in a transparent measuring bowl (a very cheap one I bought a few years ago and accidentally found in a kitchen cupboard). I put the kneeded dough in it, flattened it a bit with wet hands and I'm just waiting until it doubles in volume.
Yep. That's a very reliable way. It works much better if your temperatures change. Is it easy for you to stretch and fold in the container?
@@the_bread_code I usually make no-knead bread, so haven't tried that (I imagine it is possible, the bowl is wide enough for it). But bulk fermentation has proven to be my sourdough-nightmare so far, and I"m already glad it works this way!
Hi. What's the name of your bread pan? The one you bake with?
Hey Capn. This is the one: thbrco.io/dutch-oven-batards. It's called Challenger Bread Pan.
Parchment paper liner on the Dutch oven would help!
Yep. That would definitely have helped :-)
I never preheat my dutch oven vessel, but I do preheat the oven itself. I get great spring with dough fresh from the fridge. I'm unclear whether you put the cold dutch oven into a cold oven?
So you would place the dutch oven in the oven while the oven is preheating. This also helps not make it stick to the dutch oven.
You mentioned, * As always give your bread dough a spritz of water.* Is this *Always* for lidded dutch oven only or also on open steam oven?
Dutch oven yep. For the open steam oven, I like to place another tray on top of the bread while it bakes. It helps a lot to keep the top part of the bread colder. No crust forms and you have more oven spring.
Hey Hendrik!
What oven do you use and what settings do you use?
I'm looking for a cheap oven that can handle some high heat.
Hey Seraphinia. I have a basic one at home from Bosch. I had this one in my 2nd flat in Dusseldorf when I was still commuting: amzn.to/3bQZQaY. It's great, but you would also need a dutch oven. For a small oven a dutch oven is really good, else you are too close to the heating elements :-)
@@the_bread_code
Thanks!
I already have a dutch oven, so I can protect it from direct heat until the last moment. I'll take a look at the link provided.
any thoughts on the mini oven with steam? I forget the name brand I was looking at
@@voidremoved Yep - I forgot the name too, but I only read mixed reviews :-D
This is why German engineering is the best. This is pure science at work.
Where can I buy that black pot?
To me it looks like the 'no preheat' bread just over proofed since it took longer to warm up in the oven. I bet that if you gave it 10 minutes less proofing it would look the same as the preheated one.
I use the ball in water test. The water temperature should be tha same as the rooms.
Good idea, thanks for sharing!
Cool. I like experiments! Do you think the breads would be similar (minus the bottom crust) if you had used a pot with less room for spreading of the dough? Also, do you think the opening of the lid way too early had much effect on the result?
Hey Amund. Excellent questions. On the first question - interesting idea. That would be worth trying 🤓. On the 2nd question - nope - it was already too flat then. I really think high heat helps with retaining the shape. I have one more experiment planned on this 🤓
@@the_bread_code Hope to hear the results of the experiment :)
Hallo und Moin aus Bremen. Frage: hast Du schon mal einen Römertopf ausprobiert? Gruß und Danke für die aufschlussreichen Testreihen.
Moin Silke! Ja, das funktioniert auch super :-).
@@the_bread_code Dankeschön!
Sonuç nedir ? Yazılı olarak video sonuna eklemeniz gerekir...
What about some oil on the bottom of the bread pan?
Good idea. I think the parchment paper would have helped more :-)
@@the_bread_code agree. I always use parchment paper...works great for me. But crazy German, I preheat the oven!🤣🤣🤣
How about baking it in the German rommertopf?
Yep. That works too. Make sure it is preheated as well, or, make a stiffer dough :-)
For sourdough, do you like yout Bovn more or your Challenger bread cloche pan more? any strengths and weaknesses to share?
I mostly go for an inverted tray now. It saves some money! If I had to pick one of the two, I would go for the challenger.
Isn't it true, that bacteria start dying at roughly 100°C?
I wonder if the bacteria explode into bigger bubbles of gas with higher temperature.
But talking logic, I assume lower heat doesn't reach the core of the dough quick enough. So the inner core has more time to push towards the sides, creating the UFO.
On that thought, is there a way to inject the heat into the dough quicker? I'm thinking infra red. Some ovens have the infra red function. It should basically nuke the dough pretty quick, giving the dough core less time to push its sides.
Who knows, maybe the bread turns out to be shaped like a football.
Interesting ideas 😎. It seems I need to get myself an infrared oven 🤣