14 Cast Iron Skillet Bread Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How do you bake bread in a cast iron pan? ›

To prevent burning, use coarse cornmeal or wheat bran

This layer helps keep the dough from sticking to the cast iron but also lifts it up to prevent burning. Sprinkle a generous amount of coarse corn onto the pan after it's preheated and just before you turn your dough onto the pan to score.

Place a cast iron skillet on the bottom rack of the oven. Place the dough on a piece of parchment paper, if using, and carefully set it on the preheated baking stone. Carefully add the boiling water to the cast iron skillet and close the oven door.

You just need a lid to cover it and the proper heat-conducting cast-iron material, and your bread will come out perfectly every time. Size & Shape: Look for a 6- to 7-quart, round Dutch oven. Anything much bigger will cause the bread to spread out and go flat.

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.

Place the cookware in the oven upside down. Place a large baking sheet or aluminum foil on the bottom rack. Bake at 450-500 degrees F for one hour. Allow to cool.

"Preheat your oven with the cast iron inside so that the surface retains enough heat for your loaf to get a good oven spring. Once it's hot enough and you're ready to load your loaf, sprinkle corn meal on the surface of the cast iron so that your loaf does not stick."

Le Creuset enameled cast iron is also exceptional at heat distribution and retention to keep the temperature inside the pot more constant than a regular oven, which also helps the baking process. Most no knead bread recipes call for preheating the Dutch oven while the oven heats up.

If the pan is seasoned properly, you can bake bread in it without any further preparation, as long as it's hot enough. I bake my no knead breads in a cast iron dutch oven all the time, and I've never had one stick to the pan.

You can still cook all the bread recipes that were written for a larger Dutch. There are a couple of things to keep in mind, however. For example, if you find yourself with a lot of dough, you might want to reduce the recipe by a third to fit nicely in the 3.5-quart Dutch oven.

What is the best temperature to bake bread in a Dutch oven? ›

Preheat Dutch Oven & Bake

Right before you pull the dough out of the bowl, place the dutch oven into the oven and preheat it to 450 degrees F. Placing the artisan bread dough into the warm dutch oven results in a golden-brown crispy crust.

Start with Vegetables

Any seared, sautéed, or pan-roasted vegetable recipe is a great place to start breaking in your skillet. Vegetables won't stick to your cooking surface like fatty proteins, and are easy to spread out over the entire cooking surface, helping to build even seasoning.

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.

Grease the Pan

We recommend using a baking spray that contains flour to grease the pan before baking. If you don't have a cooking spray, you can also use a tablespoon of room temperature butter to coat the pan. It's not necessary to preheat the pan in the oven before adding the batter, but it won't hurt either.

It absolutely will stick to an unseasoned cast iron pan or a pan that was not properly greased for the type of bread you are baking.