You do not, repeat not have to preheat anything before putting your bread dough in the oven.
Starting with a cold dutch oven makes it much easier and safer to get the dough in. Just bake for an extra 20 minutes at the start. If in doubt, overcooking is better than undercooking for bread.
Also... I think the reason why most recipes call for preheating is very interesting! It’s all about reproducing the conditions used by professional bakers. A professional will use an oven that can inject steam to keep the bread from drying out; baking in a dutch oven simulates this. And a professional baker will keep the oven on through the whole working day; preheating simulates this, so you can use the same timings. But if you’re only baking one loaf every couple of days, rather than 200 loaves a day, you don’t necessarily have to do all this stuff.
To use a classic HN analogy, it’s like a startup using all the same technology and processes as Google. Some of them are a good idea (keeping steam in the oven), some of them are premature until you’re operating at a massive scale (preheating the oven).
The reason to preheat the oven is to brown it quickly without drying out the outside and overcooking inside.
The same exact reason you put steak on a hot pan, not cold. If you put it on cold pan it would be cooked through before you get any browning on the outside.
If you take too long baking bread the outside will be dried out, not crisped. Not everybody sees the difference but at least for me it is pretty significant.
Consumer ovens are pitifully underpowered for the most part and will take forever to bring oven to temperature with a large wet mass inside. Even if the oven is preheated the temperature instantly dips very significantly when you put your dough in.
The reason they do it in professional setting is because they don't have time to cool it down and then get it back up to temperature. Another reason is you want repeatable results and not depending on starting temperature.
As to the safety, as long as you are not super clumsy just general common sense is enough to prevent any burns. Don't touch the oven. Use oven mittens. Use extra long mittens if you don't feel safe. Do not operate on the dough while it is inside the oven (tray out, then do whatever you want, tray in). If you use steam to bake (which I do) make sure you understand where the steam goes so you avoid the areas where the hot 200C steam will be when you open oven door so you don't burn your face and hands (the answer: it goes up). Keep your small kids occupied somewhere else so they don't feel the need to have fun with hot oven while baking and after while it is still hot.
If you use a good quality dutch oven with a well-fitting lid, drying out isn’t an issue at all. In fact you have to take the lid off for the last 10-20 minutes to brown the crust at all.
However, getting your dough into a preheated dutch oven is fiddly and a little dangerous. That’s why I recommend just starting from cold.
Hm, I'm willing to pay hundreds of dollars to buy a special pan that doesn't preheat, so I could cook the steak through first, then sear. Maybe I've been doing this wrong! Or maybe there's a Cinder Grill rep here that can get me a special deal for shilling their product :)
"The Food Lab" is also a good book, if you like diving deeper on this sort of thing.
> pay hundreds of dollars to buy a special pan that doesn't preheat, so I could cook the steak through first
You don't need hundreds, just ~$100 for an inexpensive sous vide cooker with integrated thermometer & temp regulation [0]
You can put the meet in a zip lock bag and suck the air out with a straw and have it work just fine if you want to avoid the added expense of vacuum bags. When the meat hits the desired temp, remove, unwrap, sear the outside, and voila!
Everybody has one. Most ovens can get down to 200-275 degrees and stay fairly consistent in temperature. You can take the internal temperature of the meat while its cooking, instead of waiting a set amount of time. The meat comes out dry, which saves you having to dry it coming out of the bag before you sear.
If you really want to pay to make better bread I suggest you save your money and spend a little time researching designing bread recipes instead. I did and I can recreate almost any bread just by looking at it or by person describing what they want to get. It is not at all difficult once you learn how different processing steps and different ingredient ratios influence the result.
The best investment is to learn how to do it right. Every home that has an oven and a weighing scale has essentially everything that is needed to make artisanal breads.
Of the tools that make life easier but are in no way essential:
By not preheating the oven you will generally end up with a denser, smaller loaf. This isn’t a bad thing if you’re happy with the result, but the style of bread this recipe is aimed at typically is very light with a very airy crumb.
When the loaf goes into a hot oven, you get some steam generated as water boils, and the yeast gets heated quickly, giving a minute or two of high gas output before it is killed by higher temps. This all adds air to the inside of the loaf while the dough is still very soft. When cooking at a low temperature, the crust often hardens more before this process happens, limiting the amount the loaf can expand.
Nothing to imply the trade-offs explicitly worse, it’s down to if you like the result.
But it will definitely change what you get out of the oven.
Highly recommend trying it yourself and compare two loaves cooked with and without preheating to see how much it changes the result and if it makes it easier and more enjoyable for you to bake!
I preheat the dutch oven in a 475f oven, but I put the dough on a piece of parchment paper, grab the corners, and safely drop it into the blazing hot pot. As a bonus, this also makes it easy to pull out. Works great.
Another reason is that the time it takes for the Dutch oven to come to temperature depends on a lot of parameters (size of Dutch oven, size of oven, fan or not, power of oven) so pre-heating allows for the timings to be consistent.
But I agree on the safety concerns so I will try your method on my next loaf, now is not the time to get bad burn wounds.
My personal experience is that bread is sensitive enough to parameters that you’re going to have to “get to know” your equipment anyway end do some experimentation.
Yes, timings will definitely vary. I timed how long my oven took to preheat with a cold dutch oven, and it was around 20 minutes, so that’s about how long I add.
But I’ve found the timing is not super critical, the main thing is not to undercook. (Note that most recipes say things like “check for doneness, and bake for another 5 minutes if the loaf doesn’t sound hollow”.)
The steam injection ovens, invented IIRC in the early 20th century, were nearly the death of French bread, supplanted by the insipid industrial baguette.
Luckily Lionel Poilâne revived artisanal French bread in the 1970s, resulting in loaves like those pictured in the article.
I dunno, I’m not sure you can attribute either the industrialization of bread production, or the artisanal bread movement, to any one invention or person.
For example, you could tell exactly the same story about the electric mixer leading to faster bread making, leading to large-scale production of low-quality bread; and Raymond Carvel reviving artisanal French bread with his popularization of autolysis (mixing the flour and water and resting it before adding yeast).
The industrial baguette (which includes those of a lot of bakeries) is pretty uninteresting, with a uniform and non-structural internal texture and a vaguely crusty exterior. Compare that to the radically different banette you can find at artisanal bakeries which unfortunately of course are hard to sustain financially outside wealthy enclaves.
Also if you didn't experience it, the food choices of the 60s, 70s, and even early 80s were pretty restricted and of poor quality in Europe, Australia and the USA (and likely elsewhere). Even in the USA where there was an explosion of products, the quality of the food was poor and largely undifferentiated. And thus with bread in France.
I was lucky that our home in Paris had several good bakeries within a few minutes' walk of our front door (including Poilâne's) but it was obvious that this was a product of economic good fortune. But when you venture out to the countryside in France or Germany the goods in shops primarily come from a truck from a faraway factory. Surprisingly this appears to me (unscientifically) to be more extreme in France than Germany
UK supermarket baguettes are a poor approximation of continental Europe's (I suppose most of my experience is of France's).
Actually, Waitrose's baguette - as opposed to its 'flute' or 'French stick' - is not bad. Not as good, but not bad. The cheaper flutes and sticks (which seem to be all that other places sell) are just.. completely different.
I've never had a baguette with a nice crispy outside that results in flakes all over the breakfast table, and a soft, fluffy, inside like those so prevalent in France though.
While I'm at it - tomatoes! Tomatoes are so much nicer in France too.
Eh, it really depends on the kind of bread your making. I think it probably works with regular yeasted breads, but you're definitely going to get less oven spring with sourdough.[1]
There are many ways to make bread. If you got a technique that doesn't require preheating, that's fine, it's yet another way to make a particular kind of bread.
I will not say that your bread isn't good. However, if you want great crust and oven spring using dutch oven while baking in a home oven, a preheat is a good idea and it works.
I preheat at max temp, 500F for 1 hour with the empty dutch oven inside. Here's a good recipe that I've used recently, it's beginner friendly and uses common flours (King Authur bread and whole wheat blend)... https://www.theperfectloaf.com/simple-weekday-sourdough-brea...
Have you definitely tried the same recipe (except baking time) both with and without preheating? Maybe I’m not discerning enough, and I freely admit my results aren’t amazingly consistent at the best of times, but I honestly can’t tell the difference in the results.
I was thinking for a “simple” recipe that link sure has a lot of steps. I’ve been making bread like this for a long time. There’s no need to do most of these steps.
I mix all of the ingredients together at once in the beginning. Stir and fold with hands. Will be lumpy.
Come back two or three times after about 20 minutes. No need to set a clock just wing it. You’ll know it’s ready once the dough becomes smooth.
And I don’t buy bread flour. Why keep an extra type of those? I buy AP flour and keep vital wheat gluten (available from places like Whole Foods) in the freezer. Mix in one or two tbsp depending on how you like the texture.
And as you say, no need to preheat the oven. If you’re in doubt stick a probe thermometer in. Bread is done after 190 F.
You also don't need to wait 16 hours for a leavening. Just about 2 hours with the process explained in the article may be sufficient as well.
YMMV though since, in my experience, the simplicity of it all is actually quite nuanced and delicate. Small changes in water amounts or yeast preparation can yield big differences in the end product. Curious to hear someone's thoughts on this...
Edit: This is also often called a "no knead" recipe...
Leavening for fewer hours gives a different kind of structure the the bread.
Shorter leavening: smaller bubbles, more soft texture.
Longer leavening: bigger bubbles, more chewy texture.
Longer leavening also gives it a more yeasty flavour. I think the shorter leavened bread goes well with jam and the longer leavened bread goes well with savoury toppings.
Are you referring to preheating the oven (i.e. the big box with the stove on top that gets warm) or the Dutch oven (i.e. the cast iron bowl with a lid)?
Starting with a cold dutch oven makes it much easier and safer to get the dough in. Just bake for an extra 20 minutes at the start. If in doubt, overcooking is better than undercooking for bread.
I’ve done this myself several times and it works great. Here’s the needed citation: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2017/07/05/baking-in-a-...
Also... I think the reason why most recipes call for preheating is very interesting! It’s all about reproducing the conditions used by professional bakers. A professional will use an oven that can inject steam to keep the bread from drying out; baking in a dutch oven simulates this. And a professional baker will keep the oven on through the whole working day; preheating simulates this, so you can use the same timings. But if you’re only baking one loaf every couple of days, rather than 200 loaves a day, you don’t necessarily have to do all this stuff.
To use a classic HN analogy, it’s like a startup using all the same technology and processes as Google. Some of them are a good idea (keeping steam in the oven), some of them are premature until you’re operating at a massive scale (preheating the oven).