Cold Oven Baking

Am I the last person to discover cold-oven baking? I only heard about it a few months ago, even though the method has apparently been around forever. The idea of putting my carefully crafted artisan loaf into a cold Dutch oven felt completely backwards and totally against everything I’ve learned about baking bread at home.

Cold-oven baking basically means placing your food into an unheated oven, turning it on, and letting the bake happen as the oven warms. It cuts out preheating time, can save a bit of energy, and actually works well for certain breads, cookies, and cakes that benefit from a longer, gentler bake. It can also protect your bakeware from being heated empty. King Arthur even has a great comparison of sourdough baked in a cold oven versus a preheated one.

In theory, I love the idea. It sounds so much simpler: no half-hour preheat, no wrestling a blazing-hot Dutch oven out of the oven just to drop dough inside.

So on Sunday I baked two sourdough loaves—one cold-oven, one hot-oven. For the cold-oven test, I loaded the dough into my Aldi bread dome, covered it, slid it into the oven, and set the temperature to 450°F. I baked it about 30–40 minutes covered, then uncovered it for roughly another 20 because I wanted a deep brown crust.

Well…I definitely got a deep brown crust on the bottom. Burnt is probably the more accurate word. We literally had to cut the bottom off. The loaf did rise well and looked pretty good otherwise. For whatever reason, though, I think our oven just bakes oddly—uneven and painfully slow to heat.

The second loaf went into the same bread dome, but this time preheated in a 450°F oven for 30 minutes. It baked 30 minutes covered plus 20 uncovered, rose even better than the cold-oven loaf, had great color, and didn’t scorch on the bottom.

Brown, but not torched

So for now, I think I’m sticking with the method I know works. Still, I’m happy with how much my sourdough has improved over the past year. Next year’s goals: improving my pizza dough and finally nailing a really good focaccia.