baking stuff in a dutch oven -- help? suggestions?

[eschatonic]

So I live in China where nobody has ovens in their kitchen. I have a gas stove and a dutch oven, and I'd like to bake some stuff because Chinese baked goods are, to put it kindly, crap.

Alas, the Googles do not help. All the online recipes for "dutch oven" recipes involve either (1) heaping coals on top of the dutch oven, because you're on a camping trip and/or a "homesteader" aka survivalist or (2) putting the dutch oven into your regular oven.

So, any help? I am not a good enough baker that I could figure it out on my own. At least not without wasting a lot of time and food and filling the apartment with clouds of smoke which will not endear me to my roommates.

I'm mainly interested in Bread and/or deserts.

[MadGastronomer]

You pretty much have to have some way of surrounding the dutch oven with heat, or it won't give you an even result, and your bread will be burned on the bottom and underdone on top.

[InkRose]

Surely you can use it much like you would any ceramic pot or casserole dish. (Actually I only just learned that a ceramic pot with a lid is apparently not a crock pot even though it is crockery. Weird I thought. Unless I misunderstood my googlings.) Granted, most of the time I also see it used in an oven, for example in stew recipes. My mother-in-law sometimes makes a rice pudding (at least I think of it as rice pudding, but in Finnish ) type of dessert (Cooked rice, some milk or cream, eggs, and pretty finely chopped hazelnut. A little sugar. Served usually with raspberry jam.), although, again, she puts the whole pot into the oven. I can't think of a reason you couldn't do it on the stove, well, beyond a more even distribution of heat. Also she usually takes the lid off at some point so the surface crisps up just a bit and takes on some colour, which might be tricky to get on a stove...

Hmmm... I think I'll have to get the recipe for that, for experimentation is not a strong point for me either.

I guess for smaller amounts it might be feasible. Or you could pre-heat the dutch oven or something.

[MadGastronomer]

InkRose: Crock Pot is a brand name for a slow cooker, that's why not all ceramic pots are Crock Pots.

[InkRose]

Yeah, I guess it's just one of those once-proper nouns that have become common names for the item in question. "Slow cooker" is another odd name btw, imo, as it conjures up an image of a low-powered electric stove or something. Or a lazy chef. And I guess it sort of is the former, at least in its appliance form.

Anyway, in Finnish they're usually just called pots ("pata", this can also be used for a (very) large kettle or a cauldron) if they have a lid and/or high sides, and pans ("vuoka", as in bread pan = "leipävuoka") if they're shallow and open.

ETA: Sorry for the OT, I'll let you get back to it now

[eschatonic]

You pretty much have to have some way of surrounding the dutch oven with heat, or it won't give you an even result, and your bread will be burned on the bottom and underdone on top.

I figured out that I need to put whatever I'm cooking in a smaller pot inside the dutch oven so the heat can be more evenly distributed. I was more hoping for cook times. The internet says things like "heap 10-15 coals on top and leave it for an hour" which is not terribly helpful to me.

[MadGastronomer]

My best suggestion is to get a probe thermometer and find out what the temperature is like in your setup.

[eschatonic]

That I can handle. Thanks.

[MadGastronomer]

More suggestions for evenness and accurate temping:

Put a rack or something under the pot inside the dutch oven, so the pot isn't in direct contact. Do this anytime you bake or cook in it.

Put something inside the pot when you're taking the temp. Dry rice should work fine. You need something to soak up the heat and keep the probe out of context with the pot, though.

[Jezabella49]

During the time I was living in a converted bread truck, I did not have an oven.

I had a gas stove with 3 burners.  I made bread in a covered frying pan on the stove.  I even made brioche in that frying pan; and corn bread, and cookies.  Not all at the same time.  Mostly not even on the same day.  One of the favorites was rye bread, served hot with Worcestershire sauce.

I made smaller units of dough, more like large rolls in volume than a standard loaf of bread.  I sliced these in half horizontally when they were cooked through.  I do not remember the amount of time it actually took to bake them, but the first attempt included lots of "is it done yet?" checking.

I like the probe thermometer suggestion.  It would have been useful to have had one back then.