Cast Iron Fridays & Sourdough Bread Baked in Dutch Oven

    I have started up a cast iron sharing event.

    You are most welcome to join in with a post (new or old) just link up back to here to help spread the word. 
    If you no longer use cast iron but still have a favorite recipe or method please feel welcome to share. This is a learning and sharing event for all of us interested. 
   Also if you see a recipe or information for cast iron that you think sounds good you are most welcome to share as well.
    Any of you that have used your cast iron at events or camping are most welcome.
   This is for anything cooked, grilled, baked indoors or outdoors in cast iron. This also includes cast iron dutch ovens with the legs and special lids to hold the hot coals.  This event also includes cast iron pieces enameled 


                  Welcome to Cast Iron Fridays

   This week I wanted to share with you another bread baked in cast iron.
    I have two sourdough starters in my frig. an Austrian Rye sourdough and one from King Arthur using unbleached white flour. I have been promising to share the rye starter with a friend, so I just decided to refresh the other one and make a sourdough loaf for my Hubs.
  He likes his sourdough breads really strong so I went an extra 12 hours on the starter before separating it out to save back for starter and for the recipe.

   I decided I wanted to make a no knead bread and bake it up in my dutch oven.  It was ready to bake up around 10 am or so this morning but I visited with my friend an extra hour-so this dough got even more sour. 

     This is the sourdough dough after proofing 12 hours over nite.

 This morning I took a spatula (very sticky dough) and got it out of this bowl onto a heavily floured board  I kneaded in a bit of flour til most of the stickiness was gone

And added the dough into my dutch oven that I had sprayed the bottom with olive oil and sprinkled a bit of coarse cornmeal  I also used a serrated knife and made some slits into the dough. I also sprayed a little olive oil on top-covered and let rise.

  I was about an hour late getting home so this to me was over risen and was not sure how it would bake. 

   I placed it in a hot 450 f degree oven with the lid on and baked for 40 minutes.

it came out of the dutch oven very easily. the crust on the outsides is crunchy-perfectly baked inside.

This bread I thought was a very strange shape as it spread out to the sides of the pan. Actually it turned out perfect for slicing. Hubs says it tasted perfect, it smelled so delicious, like it came out of a bakery. I was soooo tempted to take a bite.

If you do not have a sourdough starter going-that's fine too as I found several recipes with yeast baked this way for similiar results-you just will not get that sourdough flavor. This is a very easy way to bake up bread with excellent results and gorgeous loaves.

Dutch Oven Crusty Bread

Dutch Oven Bread by Le Creuset 

From King Arthur Flour Bread Baking in a Dutch Oven


The last two links especially are full of information and techniques and if interested well worth the read. I pinned these to my bread board on Pinterest.

  and if interested in sourdough this is my most favorite book ever. I may have shared this in the past. I have been baking from this book for many years now-probably over 20 now.  He also has excellent sourdough starters I bought the Austria Rye from him. Back in the day when I did not know I had celiac (gluten intolerance) I was baking all of our breads and had four different sourdoughs in my frig.  His method of handling your sourdough is the best-I realized this again last year when I bought a new starter from King Arthur along with their very awesome crock for sourdough storage - and was reading their recipes. They had you adding yeast-no way-and they had you throwing out half your starter each time. So wasteful and just is not how sourdough is handled-that's my story haha

Now it is your turn to share your Cast Iron Fridays Post