Help me make this baking adjustment, please

January 25, 2023 7:28 PM

Experienced bread bakers, can you please answer a question I have about adjusting a recipe.

I've been following this this recipe for King Arthur Rustic Sourdough and I have 2 questions about potential adjustments.

1: If I choose to make 2 round loaves instead of long ovals, do I need to adjust oven temp or cooking time?

2: If I want to bake a loaf inside a dutch oven, do I need to adjust oven temp or cooking time?

(The King Arthur "search comments" tool kinda sucks, which is why I'm no longer searching for answers there.)

Thanks!

posted by BlahLaLa to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Best answer: 1 - round vs oval - I wouldn't expect the timing or temp range to vary much at all especially since the King Arthur recipe gives you a 5 minute doneness window after just 25 minutes. You just need to watch and take its temp.

2 - dutch oven cooking - this is more up in the air. Typical for these recipes (example), is to cook covered for x minutes and then uncover for 2x minutes. The linked to recipe is wetter than what your recipe calls for and cooks at 450F instead of 425F. In my experience getting the right dialed in times and temps can be a bit finnicky. I generally lower the temp a bit when i take the lid off to prevent the bottom from burning. Again...experiment and take notes.
posted by mmascolino at 8:13 PM on January 25, 2023

Best answer: If you have a probe thermometer, the best possible approach, in both circumstances, is to bake to an internal temperature of 190° F. That takes all the guesswork out of it — once it hits 190, the bread is done.

(Then, if you want, you can experiment with the oven temperature and covered/uncovered split until you get the crust color and crunch you like.)
posted by dorothy hawk at 8:39 PM on January 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

There are lots of easy ways to check for doneness of the bread. You're far better off judging it yourself than relying on the given time from a recipe when there are so many variables in play (your oven, the humidity of your flour, the amount of rise, the fermentation time, the flour chemistry, and so on). Crust colour is easy to see and a thermometer in the centre of the loaf is reliable to make sure it is baked through or you can just check by tapping on the bottom of the loaf and listening for a hollow sound.

I would say you could cook this simple loaf anywhere from 375F to 500F, with or without a dutch oven, in whatever shape you want. I would bump the temperature up to 450F and aim for about 20 minutes in a well-preheated dutch oven with the last 12 or so minutes uncovered, but that's just how I prefer my bread. Just try it out and see how your loaves come out!
posted by ssg at 8:42 PM on January 25, 2023

Best answer: That's one of my most-made bread recipes! It's pretty flexible.

Near the bottom, it talks about switching to using a Dutch oven, & the example recipe they use changes like so:
Before:
* 25-35m @ 450 degrees
After:
* 25-30m @ 450 degrees, then remove the lid & bake for an additional 5-10m.

So really, it's about the same amount of time & the same temperature; just with a bit of time set aside at the end with the lid off.

As for differences by bread shape; that's within the range of variation listed in the recipe.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:06 PM on January 25, 2023

Best answer: There's a blog post about the recipe that even talks about doing the cold start method with a Dutch oven:

I take the entirety of the dough, shape it into a round ball, and place it in the lightly greased (cold) crock.

Some folks like to preheat their Dutch oven, then add the dough. I prefer putting the dough into a cold crock; I just feel there's less chance of it scorching. (This from someone who's carbonized several loaves using a black cast iron Dutch oven: once burned, twice shy!)

I cover the crock with its lid, and let the loaf rise. When it's fully risen, I flour it, slash it, and put it in my cold oven. I set the timer for 45 minutes, and turn the oven on.

When the timer goes off I remove the crock's lid, and let the bread bake for an additional 15 minutes or so, or until it's nicely browned and its interior registers about 200°F

FWIW I've been baking sourdough weekly for almost three years now, and I'm still kind of tuning how I produce loaves, so I can vouch for making subtle adjustments over time as you learn how your oven, Dutch oven, and dough perform. I do a naturally leavened, long fermented dough using an overnight retardation to build flavor. In the past few months I've adjusted the amount of time I let the dough warm up on baking day, the amount of time I proof the loaves after shaping, and which rack in the oven I use, and I'm currently messing around with more frequent feedings of my starter on non-baking days (which turns out to be a really hard set of habits to change). Basically the best way to figure out if something will work for you is to try it and see if you like it. Once you've got the basics down anything you make will be tasty bread, and the question is just whether it's more appealing to you when you try something different, or if you liked it better the first time.

(Data that may or may not help you: I preheat my Dutch ovens at 525, turn the oven to 450 when I load the dough, and bake for 20 minutes covered before removing the loaves and placing them directly on the middle rack for another 25 minutes. My dough is 78% hydration, 11.5% rye and 22.5% whole wheat, my loaves are about 900g before baking, and they're around 770g when they come out of the oven.)
posted by fedward at 10:11 AM on January 26, 2023

Response by poster: Thank you! I'm baking again this weekend so I'll let you know how it goes!
posted by BlahLaLa at 6:00 PM on January 27, 2023

Response by poster: Okay, so today I did two round loaves, and kept everything else the same - they worked well. Thank you!
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:01 PM on January 28, 2023

Response by poster: Coming back here to save this for future reference: this weekend I tried the recipe as specified in the blog post fedward linked to. It was absolutely magnificent in terms of taste and crustiness, but it stuck to the lightly oiled dutch oven. Next time I'll line the pan with parchment paper first. This is a keeper recipe/technique for sure.
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:03 PM on February 5, 2023 [2 favorites]