Homemade Dutch Oven Bread

Here is what you'll need!

Homemade Dutch Oven Bread
Makes 1 loaf

INGREDIENTS
600 grams all-purpose flour (about 4 cups, lightly packed and leveled off)
2 cups lukewarm water (between 90˚-110˚F)
1½ tablespoons salt
1 envelope dry active yeast

PREPARATION
Stir yeast packet into water and allow yeast to bloom. (A light foam should appear on top of the water after about 5 minutes. This means the yeast is alive and active.)
In a large bowl, mix flour and salt by hand. Once incorporated, create a small well in the middle and pour in the water/yeast mixture.
Mix by hand, wetting your working hand before mixing so the dough doesn’t stick to your fingers. The water and flour should come together and a form rough dough that pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If the dough is too sticky, add more flour in small increments, about 1 tablespoon at a time. If the dough is too dry, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time. Once the dough has come together, cover it and let it rise until it doubles in size (about 1.5 to 2 hours).
Uncover the dough and give it a few pokes with your finger. If the dough has risen properly it should indent under the pressure of your fingers and slowly deflate.
Using your hand or a rubber spatula fold the dough. Starting from the rim of the bowl, work the dough loose from the sides and fold it up and towards the center of the bowl. Turn the bowl 90 degrees, and repeat until all the dough has been pulled from the sides and folded towards the center. Once finished, cover and allow the dough to continue to rise for another 1.5-2 hours.
Once the dough has doubled in size again, gently remove it from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and sprinkle a small amount of flour on top of the dough. Using your hands, begin to shape the loaf. Fold the dough under itself several times to form a ball, then claps together the seams of dough underneath. Place the dough seam-side down in a clean bowl that has been coated with olive oil and flour. Cover and let rise for 1 hour.
Meanwhile, take a 6-quart dutch oven (or heavy cooking pot with oven-safe lid) and place it inside the oven. Preheat the oven to 450˚F/230˚C and allow it to heat up with the pot inside for 45 minutes.
Remove the pot from the oven and place it on a trivet or heat-safe surface. (Be careful! It’ll be VERY HOT.) Turn the proofed dough over onto a lightly floured surface and carefully place it inside of the pot. Cover with the lid and return the pot to the oven.
Bake at 450˚F/230˚C for 45 minutes,removing the lid for the last 15 minutes.
Remove bread from pot and allow to cool for 10 minutes before cutting.
Enjoy!

MUSIC
Sunglass
Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc.

[mylahobbit]

God, at my old middle school we spent a year making this kind of bread for a microbusiness project. We'd sell it at 5$ a loaf, and I tell you I was almost never happier than when I was working on the bread. The smell would waft through the whole school, and we'd have this timer so that we could have class in between mixing and shaping and folding and baking and cleaning and you'd hear it go off and see a few kids get up to go attend to the bread. We made 16 loaves a day, tuesdays and thursdays, and we'd have kids whose job it was to go out on the sidewalk beside the line of cars with a big basket of fresh-baked bread, still warm, and offer it to the parents waiting in line. I was on a team of about 6 kids who all learned how to bake and soon we knew the recipe by heart, and we had other committees for marketing and finances and stuff. We made enough of a profit to go to Washington DC at the end of the year. This brings back so many memories!

[dianapeck]

I was surprised how good the bread turned out. I tried couple of different recipes, and this one is the best. The instructions are easy, I don't see why people would say that they are not clear. From now on I will not buy bread from the stores, I'll bake my own.

[ugib]

Made this today. Super easy bread recipe. (My first time making a loaf at home instead of work.) Came out phenomenally. Super crispy outside, soft spongy crumb. Used my scale to get the 600g flour instead of measuring cups, and bumped the salt down to 1 1/2 tsp. Also for anyone wondering (I had to look it up) 1 packet of dry active yeast = 7g (or 2 1/4 tsp) of yeast, if yours is in a jar like mine!

I will be making this once a week for sure! Cant beat the yield for what was probably a 40 cent loaf of bread.

[DiannaAtherton]

What a perfect "how to" video. No annoying life story or edgy music. Thank you sir

[yousefyuksel]

This turned out amazing, I added:
1/4 cup of flour
3 table spoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of sugar to the yeast

[robertvanpiggelen]

So...for the people who use the metric system that would be:
15 grams of dry yeast
480 ml of warm water
520 grams of flour
22, 5 grams of salt

[ritikamenon]

I tried this. Didn't have a Dutch oven, so I just used a cake pan and covered it with another pan. It came out beautifully and tasted delicious. My fam finished it the same night😍😍

[notme]

Home-bound due to Covid-19, and the hoarders have cleaned the stores out of bread. :( So, I took this opportunity to learn how to make my own bread, and followed this recipe. Delicious!! As others have noted, 1 1/2 tsps of salt, NOT tbsps! The crust was super crunchy and chewy. Great outcome for my first try.

[netohcamep]

Finally a bread you don't have to start making from yesterday 🙄❤️

[victoriasandrews]

I love this bread recipe and I now make it every two days so we don’t need to buy bread anymore. It comes out perfect every time and even when we lost power and had to bake it on top of the wood stove in the cast iron Dutch oven it was still delicious.

[laurielaurel]

7 grams (.25oz.) packet of yeast
473 ml water
6 grams (1 teaspoon) of salt
532 - 563 grams of A.P Flour
Turns out great every time, my family loves it

[a.r.tucker]

...just wrote a few moments ago.
The typical ratio for salt to flour is 2% or less
If the four cups of flour weighs approx. 480-500 gms.
than the salt should be approx. 9-10 gms. or approx.
2 teaspoons. Hope this helps!

[andret.]

It was so refreshing to watch this video, short and stright to the point, without unnecessary fillers and rambling. And the bread, by the way turned out awesome. Thank you

[jrudyBU]

I used this recipe for my first time making Dutch oven bread. The only alterations I made were bread flour instead of all purpose white, and two cups of water plus 1/2 teaspoon sugar per the instructions on my jar of active dry yeast for 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast. Everything about the bread was incredible, except for the amount of salt. It was too salty for me, like others have noted. Next time I make this bread I will try 1 1/2 TEAspoons of salt. If you love a super savory taste, though, I wouldn’t change the amount of salt. Thanks for the recipe and demo - I love the simplicity!!

[derangedcrouton]

Thanks for this. This is probably the best recipe ive come across, my mums boyfriend (who's italian) compared the cracked ridge poking out of the top on my bread to the dolomites. Thats when you know youve achieved perfection, my fam was obsessed.

[artperez]

Made this yesterday with a couple minor adjustments. I used a little less salt. In the water/yeast mixture I added a teaspoon of sugar. And rather than waiting for it to proof on the counter I used the proofing function in my oven. I followed the rest of the process and the bread came out amazing!! Definitely making this again and again!

[santijmm]

Whoever wrote 500g of flour and 480ml of water in the Tasty website should probably not be writing online recipes if he can't understand that translating 2 cups of water and 4 cups of flour (both VOLUME measures) to grams (MASS) is wrong. For a beginners bread like this it would be more on the line of 350 to 370ml water to 500g flour.

[torbjornwiken]

For even more fluffy bread, try to cold uplift the bread overnight :) Look it up. It takes 12-18 hours, but the slow process makes wonders. If you make the dough before bedtime the waiting isnt that bad :)

[chrisstigas]

spritz the dough with some water in a spray bottle just before putting it into the oven - it will create some steam and give you a nicer crust.

[ctcollinthib]

Making bread at home makes you appreciate the accomplishments of those who figured this sh*t out in the first place!