Cast Iron Fridays-Tips

It's cast Iron Fridays where we share everything cast iron-cooking, baking, grilling indoors or outdoors. You are most welcome to join in with your post. 

Last Sunday when our Wisconsin friends were with us for a long weekend, we grilled up a feast for nine people and my friend Marie and I baked in my dutch ovens.  Sadly, I totally forgot to take photos of the process. If had remembered that would have been my post today.
    I haven't had the chance to do anything fun again outdoors. Instead I thought I would share some tips.

My friend Marie uses the coals chart for achieving the desired temperature in the cast iron dutch oven. Many use this, for me I have had better luck just "winging" it.
    Some of these charts have more coals on the bottom then on top-the couple times I have used the chart for baking breads-it always gets too brown on the bottom, even though I have the dutch ovens above the coals. Others though have good success with this method. Our bread from Sunday had that problem too brown on the bottom-and it was because we had more coals on the bottom then the top.

   After baking from that different chart and getting things a little too brown on the bottom-I got to thinking perhaps the chart is for food like stews, lasagnas, roasts etc not baking. This thought popped into my head after last Sunday.



So after researching out charts and reading through this site-Wow the answer was right there ha ha but me like I am sure most don't know this-they just go by the chart with more coals on the bottom for everything. Of course now that I am looking for that I can't find it. oh well  I did also found this site about coals temperature and placement

     For baking, put twice as many coals on top as under the bottom. For example if your heat range calls for 15 briquettes, then put 10 on top and 5 underneath. For simmering, reverse this with 2/3 of the briquettes underneath.

   
Another question that comes up should I preheat the dutch oven first or just add the baked item (cakes, pies, breads) in cold. I think this is a preference too.  It does make sense to heat the oven up first-shorter baking time-but I always place the food in cold, and then just keep an eye on things and have hot coals ready to add as needed.

The above link I shared is a good one to save. It also shares the different ways to cook over the coals-tripod, grate, coals.

Searching online for more tips-setting up your dutch ovens
   Here  and tips with recipes here  There really is allot of information available online-just read a few and adapt what works for you.  I found this video on starting your charcoal-some good common sense tips.

   I will close with another easy bread recipe to bake up in your dutch oven-over and under the coals.

 I have been searching again for the coal charts-as this is bugging me ha ha my friend looked up something that had more coals on the bottom which we don't want for baking. I just found this-which is good information. I will be saving this for future use.


Now it is your turn to share your cast iron post.