You'll Love these Cast Iron Skillet Bread Recipes (#4 will make you drool!) (2024)

FAQs

Is cast-iron good for bread making? ›

But the real magic comes from the cast-iron Dutch oven, the perfect vessel for baking bread. It acts like an oven-within-the-oven, maintaining a high and steady heat that transforms this sticky dough into a gorgeous round loaf with a crisp crust and excellent crumb structure.

During the initial stages of baking, steam is released from the dough into the sealed pot, which traps it and keeps the dough moist. This humid environment allows the bread to rise high and promotes a crispy and shiny crust.

Most people don't have one of those, but enameled cast-iron pots are readily available—and they trap all of the internal moisture in the dough and that creates the steam you need to get a crisp and shiny crust. It really is fantastic and it works perfectly with our stored doughs from the book.

The disadvantages of cast iron

Additionally, cast iron pans require regular maintenance, including seasoning and careful cleaning, to prevent rust and maintain their non-stick surface. Improper cleaning or using harsh cleaning agents can strip away the seasoning and damage the pan.

Yes, you can season the pans for frying, sautéing, or baking in cast iron cookware like pans, pots, or skillets with butter, but it's not the right choice to season it for the first time. Butter immediately starts to smoke when added to a heated pan because cast iron can withstand a lot of heat.

Uneven heat in your oven can be the culprit – if you loaf is nicely golden on the outside but gummy or moist in the inside, it's baking too quickly on the outside. Trying reducing the temperature you're baking at and bake for a bit longer.

You can shape your dough on a rectangular sheet of parchment paper, then use it to safely lower the dough into your Dutch oven. Once your gorgeous loaf of bread is finished cooking, the parchment paper makes removing the loaf super easy.

A Dutch oven is a catch-all term for enclosing your loaf inside a chamber for the first 20 minutes of the bake and then baking without the lid for the next 20 minutes. Enclosing a loaf like this in the initial part of the bake helps the loaf to achieve really good oven spring.

Rinse out your Dutch oven with a little warm water, and scrub with a stiff brush to remove any food or stuck-on residue. Lightly scuff the cooking surface and interior walls of the Dutch oven with a chain mail scrubber. The chain mail will also help remove any sticky food that hasn't come away yet.

It's the steam that gives you good oven spring and an airy crumb. Without it, the crust would harden too quickly and your bread would likely not expand to its full potential. By taking the lid off for the second half of the bake, you end up with a golden brown crusty loaf.

What type of pan is best for bread? ›

A great loaf pan bakes evenly browned, neatly shaped loaves. It should be made from aluminized steel for optimized browning and have a nonstick coating that releases loaves immediately when turned over and is easy to clean. Finally, a good loaf pan is versatile and can handle yeasted bread, batter bread, and sourdough.

Cast iron: While cast iron requires more care than the other materials on this list, its heat retention and distribution are second to none, resulting in beautifully browned loaves every time. However, it's heavy and is hand wash only.

Most bakers prefer to bake loaves of bread in metal pans. Metal loaf pans conduct heat quickly and easily, which helps bake loaves evenly by allowing the heat to pass through the pan and into your dough.

You really can use any cast iron skillet to bake these sourdough recipes. I have mostly used a 12" round cast iron skillet for these recipes. However I also have an enamel cast iron skillet that I use for some recipes (although I don't love the enamel cast iron skillet).