If there are two of us or we are alone, baking a large bread can be a source of waste, you will tell me that we can make croutons or breadcrumbs with the leftovers, but how many jars of breadcrumbs do you need in life? Bored of always figuring out the recipe for a small loaf from a recipe of 3 cups or 3 and a half cups or even worse in grams, 320g, 500g, 600g, here is my recipe for a 2-cup dutch oven bread, an easy bakery without kneading.
A bread recipe without kneading with only 5 ingredients with little preparation! A delicious, easy-to-make, homemade casserole dish that will give you the pride of having made it yourself! It is possible that you will have to do some tests to master the peculiarity of your dutch oven and your oven, but I succeed this recipe every time. Little tip: certain dutch oven in certain oven can cause the crust on the bottom to be too hard or even burnt, ideally place a pizza stone on the lower rack or a fried pan with or without water to prevent direct heat on the dutch oven.
In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.
Add lukewarm water and mix with a spatula or blender until you get a coarse mixture. No more than one to two minutes in the blender, the goal is not to have a smooth dough to avoid kneading.
Place the dough in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rise between 2 and 3 hours, it should double in volume.
After 2 hours, flour the dough to prevent it sticking too much and fold the dough directly into the bowl to form a ball (you can add a little flour by turning the dough). Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for another two hours. You can skip the second rising step and go straight to the oven, but the bread is often denser.
At the end of the second rising, place the casserole dish in the oven and preheat the oven to 450 ⁰F. When the temperature is reached, let the casserole heat for another 10 minutes. During this time prepared to put in casserole your dough.
Sprinkle with flour and roll the dough into a ball on a square of sulphide paper, the corners of which you have cut so that nothing sticks out of the casserole dish.
Drop the bread into the casserole dish. WARNING!!! Be VERY careful to put on your oven mitts ... everything is extremely hot! Cover and put in the oven for 30 min at 450 ⁰F then remove the cover, lower the oven to 425 ⁰F and continue cooking for another 30 min.
There you go, a small, golden and crispy loaf. Let the loaf cool on a wire rack.
