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After your dough has proved in the fridge overnight, remove it. It should have risen. Turn it out of the banneton onto the counter. I use a silicone bread sling (available on Amazon here) under my dough. This helps keep the bottom from burning and makes it easier to remove from the Dutch oven later.
Now you will need to score it. Scoring isn’t only decorative. It allows room for the bread to expand while baking. It also controls the expansion a little more, instead of the bread just bursting open anywhere when it expands.
We live in Maine, and I like to score pine trees on the top of my round loaves. I do one deep curved expansion score from the top around to the bottom (on the right). This will create the “ear” on the bread. The trees on top are more decorative than anything else.
The sandwich loaf below is scored similarly to the round loaves. I did the expansion score on the right, and a single tree on top. Most of the time during the year I do a single score down the center just for ease.
A few months ago, my friend Natalie told me about the two loaf pan method of baking sandwich bread. Natalie has a YouTube channel all about baking sourdough bread, and she’s a huge wealth of information! Check her out – she’s the Alaska Bread Lady (@TheAKBreadLady).
The two loaf pan method functions just like a Dutch oven, but the HUGE plus side to it is you can fit more pans in your oven at once. I can only fit two Dutch ovens in my oven at a time, but I can fit four loaf pans at once. This has been a huge time saver when we need to bake a lot at once.
Whether using bread pans or Dutch ovens, you want to bake part of the time at a higher temperature with the lid on. This allows your bread to rise faster (called oven spring). The lid traps steam inside the Dutch oven, which helps with rise. After that initial period, you remove the lid, drop the temperature in the oven, and continue baking.
A lot of recipes will have you starting your bread in a 500 degree oven. I don’t like a super crunchy crust, and have discovered that starting at 500 gives the bread a really crisp crust. Much crisper than my family prefers. So I do 475 for 20 minutes, with the lid on. Then I remove the lid, and turn the oven to 425 for another 20 minutes.
At first, you may need to experiment with your oven. I have two kitchens, and my ovens both bake quite differently. My upstairs oven bakes hotter, so I actually have to bake bread in that oven at 460 at first and then 410. The downstairs oven is 475 and 425. Keeping an eye on the bread as it bakes will help to guide you as well.
This is what my sandwich loaves look like right out of the oven. I could have kept them in a little longer to get a bit darker. They’re still done and will be nice and soft.
To know if your bread is done or not, use a thermometer. I like to use an instant read thermometer and insert it in the expansion where one of the holes already is in the bread. You want the inside of the bread to be 205-210 degrees.
This bread below is exactly how golden I like it to be. The top is nicely blistered as well.
Be careful removing the bread with the bread sling. It’s going to be hot!
Place the bread on a cooling rack and allow it to cool completely before silcing.
