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Dutch Oven Recipes

It cracks me up that no-knead DO bread is a “new” thing. I can’t imagine it wasn’t done before and just called “bread” 🤣

But the results are fantastic, and it is soooo easy. You can be nearly sloppy with your measurements; this isn’t a French bakery recipe!

It’s easy to mix your flour, salt, yeast, and whatever else you want to add (dried herbs) in a ziploc bag for the trip, then add water to the bag and squish around at camp and into a proof bowl with it. Big key is preheating the DO with the lid on!
 
Here's some of article I could copy without subscription. Somehow when I looked begore it let me read entire article without paywall. Just that I remember no-knead being a new thing when it showed up in NYT.

"No-knead bread was “the recipe that democratized bread-baking,” said the cookbook author Peter Reinhart.
No-knead bread was “the recipe that democratized bread-baking,” said the cookbook author Peter Reinhart. Credit...Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

No-Knead Bread, Revisited
In 2006, it changed the face of baking. Now, J. Kenji López-Alt takes a fresh look at Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman’s revolutionary recipe.

I remember where I was when the baking revolution began. Do you?

It was November 2006, and I was a test cook at Cook’s Illustrated magazine in Brookline, Mass., when I walked over to see what my colleagues were gawking at. It was a loaf of bread that my fellow test cook David Pazmiño had just transferred to a cooling rack. I remember the loud snaps and pops coming from the bread as it cooled, the glossy crust crackling. He cut off a slice, revealing an open, airy hole structure with a moist, custard crumb. It was extraordinary.

It was Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman’s no-knead bread, then recently published in The New York Times.

“This was the recipe that democratized bread-baking,” says Peter Reinhart, a chef-instructor at Johnson & Wales University and the author of “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” (Ten Speed Press, 2001)."
 
For hundreds of years, people would make pan bread, biscuits, pan de campo and bannock in the top of a flour sack. They made a depression, added some water, salt, baking powder and made a soft dough. Then they cooked it in a Dutch Oven, in a frying pan, on a comal, in a gold pan or wrapped around a stick. It is not new and not difficult.

Baking powder breads are as old as the hills. Using yeast to make bread adds a another level of difficulty, but it is still not that hard. You can knead the dough and let it rise. You can do it several times or not at all. You can use beer or other forms of carbonization to make the bread rise. You can use sourdough, or you can make flat bread.

I urge everyone by all means to make some different kinds of bread. Find one you like. Add it to your bush craft repertoire.
Just remember the old Basque tradition. Cut a cross in the bread when it is done and give the first piece to your best dog.
 
That no knead bread is a yeast bread and it wants to rise for 14-24 hours before baking. That would not work for me as I rarely stay in one place more that one night and in the fall (my preferred time to trip it might be hard to keep it warm.
I did find a way to see the original recipe from the Times and another one based on it on some other cooking site.
Jim
 
That no knead bread is a yeast bread and it wants to rise for 14-24 hours before baking. That would not work for me as I rarely stay in one place more that one night and in the fall (my preferred time to trip it might be hard to keep it warm.
I did find a way to see the original recipe from the Times and another one based on it on some other cooking site.
Jim
Use warm water (125 degrees) and a tsp of yeast for a 3-hour rise. It’s also portable!

This is the recipe that got me started:

 
I made the no-knead dough at home and refrigerated, and just brought dough car camping. Certainly can make yeast dough on site. In a class above biscuits and bannock imo.
 
I don't think I said it was new,

No you didn’t, and I didn’t mean to imply such; it’s my impression that the internets seems to act like it is. I just assume it’s part of the unending wave of newly rediscovered formerly known things which have passed out of the new consciousness.
 
Here are a couple loaves of DO bread I made for Christmas.....It's an artisan white 80% Biga. It would be extremely difficult to make in camp as the total process takes about 16 hours and you have to control the temperature the whole time.......maybe car camping.....I'm still searching for that perfect recipe for that layover day or stuck in camp because of a storm day when I'm on a week or longer canoe trip.....

Mike
IMG_4032.jpg
 
Don't be afraid to use prepared dough in a tube. It is easy and always adds a lot to any meal.
 
Been a while since anyone posted in this one, but here are some of my favorite Dutch oven recipes.


I use the dutch oven mostly for baking. I use charcoal since it provides more reliable heat, but I need to get better at using coals from the fire - would be nice not to have to lug charcoal along. I thought about getting one of those fancy infrared heat guns, but that seems way beyond the tradition of wilderness cooking.
 
if you're in select parts of the west, bark from a fallen doug fir makes exceptional coals for cooking. i've not yet found anything in the NE that's near as good, unfortunately. i usually settle for punky-but-dryish wood.
 
Charcoal is over rated. I am never using it.
Who says wood heat is unreliable?
It has been used for hundreds of years.
 
You do what you want. My experience is 30 briquettes with my 10" Dutch oven, and whatever I cook comes out perfect. I haven't had the same luck with coals from the fire, but I am working on it.
 
If I'm using a Dutch oven, I'm not far from my car, so charcoal with a chimney is my preference too.
 
I do both regularly, but if I’m baking something I almost always use charcoal. The heat is predictable.

Bob
 
I use an aluminum DO on river trips. Weight is important. I cook with wood and never run out.
 
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