Easiest Dutch Oven Bread Loaf

Directions

• In a zipper bag or bowl, stir together all dry ingredients. Add in the water and mix for about 30 seconds until you have wet, sticky dough. If it's not sticky, you can add another teaspoon of water. Place the bread dough in a bowl and cover it with a towel to let it rise, ideally at around 72°F or 22°C. It's done when the surface of the dough has bubbles and the dough has at least doubled in size. This takes 12-18 hours.
• Use your additional flour to dust a clean work surface. Put the dough, in one piece, onto the work surface. The dough will be sticky, but don't add more flour to the dough. Lightly flour your hands and the work surface and use your hands or a scraper or spatula to lift the edges of the dough toward the middle, tucking them in to make the dough round.
• Put a cotton or linen towel on your work surface and place the dough round, seam side down, into the center of the towel. Fold the edges of the towel over the dough very loosely and let it rise again for another 1-2 hours until it's roughly doubled in size.
• As the dough approaches the end of this final rise time, get your Dutch Oven warm. You'll want to bake this at about 475 degrees with more of your heat on top than on bottom. If you're using charcoal, you'll want about 3x as many briquettes on top as you have on bottom. In a 10-inch Dutch Oven, you'll need about 32 briquettes, 8 on bottom and 24 on top.
• If desired, you can cut an X into the top of your loaf. This helps keep your bread from splitting where you don't want it and can give the loaf a bit more lift. Remove the lid of your Dutch Oven and gently put your dough round into the Dutch Oven. Replace the lid and bake for about 30 minutes.
• Remove the lid and check on your bread. Bake until the bread is a deep chestnut color, which could take another 15-30 minutes. I like to rotate the Dutch Oven 90 degrees over the coals every 15 minutes or so for a more even bake. I then rotate the lid 90 degrees each time for the same reason. Once the bread looks done, you can remove it carefully from the Dutch Oven and let it cool for about an hour before cutting or tearing into it.