The cover for the book is done and we finished the pictures for the book last week.
Zac Williams is a genius! The Gibbs-Smith designer is great!

Baked Ross and Angie's Poppy seed cake up at Sourdough last weekend. Since there is a statewide fire restriction, including charcoal, I just did it in the 5th wheel oven. (Cast Iron Careth Not From Whence the Heat Cometh; me, 1996) I knew the oven would be way hot on the bottom so I used my diffusor plate from my Camp Chef Dutch oven cap. Worked great.
Everyone should try that cake, it is worth the effort.

Vickie and I took the train, Amtrak, to Colorado to see the Tracy clan. A train ride was on our bucket list. I took my favorite oven, the 12 inch breadmaker and carried it aboard the train as carry-on baggage in a 25th anniverary bag.Since we were staying at my cousin's B&B in Pine Springs, it seemed the perfect opportunity to cook for small groups while in Colorado. While there, I cooked three dishes; a bacon and cheese egg breakfast, a new bread pudding, and Vickie's famous BBQ chicken.
The guests were quite taken with the versitility of the black pot.
If you're ever near Estes, CO; stop at the Little Elk Meadows Lodge. The rooms are great and reasonably priced and the scenery is amazing. (Plus there are elk everywhere.)

Every Dutch oven cook has a favorite cobbler...Here is an easy topping for almost any cobbler.

Biscuit Topping for Cobblers

1 cup unbleached flour

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) melted butter

1/2 cup buttermilk

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.

Whisk the wet ingredients together in another bowl.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon.

Mix just until the dry ingredients are wet; don’t over mix.

Use a big serving spoon to place dollops of dough evenly on the fruit.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes until the biscuit topping is golden brown with 8-9 coals

under and 15-16 coals on the lid.

Cheers,

The Dutch Oven Baker

Buy a quality Dutch Oven

Which Dutch oven to buy? Buy quality…Camp Chef and Lodge are the best, period! My wife Vickie gave me a 12 inch Lodge for Father’s day many years ago. I seasoned it according to the directions that came with the oven and started cooking.

This oven is still my prime baking oven today. I have ovens from each company.

These days Dutch ovens arrive pre-seasoned. But even pre-seasoned ovens need a bit more seasoning.

As you begin your outdoor cooking adventure cook something greasy like a bacon-potato-cheese “something” dish a few times. Also, for the first few times you cook in your oven avoid high acid foods like tomatoes. As you do this your cast iron will begin to build a black carbon coating called the patina. A well seasoned oven can be as non-stick as a Teflon pan.

Cake notes:

·        Dutch oven cakes are essentially cold oven cakes, where you start with a cold oven and bake longer.

·        Novice cakes will usually use store bought cakes. Anyone can bake a cake in a Dutch oven with a store bought cake.

·        All cake recipes made from scratch with all purpose flour  use the same basic ratio of ingredients, measured by weight:

1 part flour (one cup is about 4-5 ounces), 1 part egg (1 large egg is 2 ounces), 1 part sugar (one cup is 8 ounces), and 1 part fat (one stick of butter is 4 ounces).

The ingredient lists for most cakes use the egg, which is 2 ounces, as a starting point for the weights of the other main ingredients because of course; you can’t cut an egg in half. For example 2 ounces flour (1/2 cup), 1/2 stick of butter (4 tablespoons), 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 egg is the starting ratio for cake. After you master this idea, the sky’s the limit.

·        Always read the entire recipe, top to bottom, before you start mixing anything, this will save you loads of time. Always try to have the ingredients at room temperature. If you forget to take the eggs out of the refrigerator, put them in a small bowl of hot water for 2 minutes.

·        Gather all of the ingredients and equipment and place it on your counter before you start. If you don’t you will invariably forget something and waste time fetching it.

·        If you want a richer, denser cake cream the butter and sugar and then the eggs and flour. If you want a lighter sponge type cake mix the eggs and sugar first, then the butter and then the flour.

·        Dust raisins and other dried fruit in flour before you add to the batter to help prevent sinking to the bottom of the cake during baking.

·        Cakes are done when they shrink slightly from the edge of the Dutch oven.

Cakes are done when a big toothpick or knife inserted in the middle comes out dry.

Cakes are done when you touch it with your finger and it springs back,

·        Under bake chocolate cakes a bit as chocolate hardens when it heats.

·        When measuring sticky stuff like molasses, honey, or syrups rinse measuring cups in warm water and they won’t stick.

·        If you happen to run out of powdered sugar take 1 cup regular sugar and 1 tablespoon corn starch, put in a food processor and run at medium speed for 2 minutes.

·        Quick bread ratios:

·        All quick breads use this basic ratio by weight; 2 parts flour, 2 parts liquid, 1 part egg, and 1 part fat. (See above for common weights) Almost everything else for cakes works here. The batter will be thicker.

·        Pie note:

·        When you make pie crust, make sure everything, including the equipment, is cold!

·        Once you get the pie crust ready you can add almost any fruit concoction imaginable.

Made some cinnamon rolls yesterday...Put too much milk in the glaze and ran out of powdered sugar. It dribbled down inside of each roll. Vickie and I like them better that way. I think the idea/mistake is a keeper.

Manuscript Submitted

The Dutch oven baking cookbook manuscript went to the publisher Friday.
Here is one of the recipes anyone can bake...

Cherry Swirl

12 inch oven

Ingredients:

8 ounces warm butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup milk

1 15 ounce can pie cherries, drained (not cherry pie filling)

Directions:

Combine all the above ingredients except the cherries. Oil a 12 inch oven and add 1/2 of the batter. Evenly pour the pie cherries on top; then carefully pour the remaining batter on top of the cherries. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes with 15-16 coals on top and 8 coals under. Check with a table knife at 30 minutes. Drizzle powdered sugar frosting on top while it’s still warm.

Frosting:

1/2 cup powdered sugar

3 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Serves 10-12

Let me know if you tried it and if you liked it.
Cheers,


Bruce
One recipe per week...
Let me know if you have a favorite cake or pie or cornbread or banana bread or raised bread. I'll put it up.

Easy Bread Recipe

I make this the night before a Sunday brunch...Just nuke each serving for
10 -15 seconds. Or nuke the whole thing on a plate for 30 seconds...Yum!

Apple Raisin Breakfast Yummies

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup molasses

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup raisins

1 large apple, peeled, cored and diced

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

2 cans refrigerated rolls, or 1 can of the "Grandes" size

cinnamon sugar, 1 part cinnamon, 1 part granulated sugar

Place a 12 inch Dutch oven over 7-8 coals and melt the butter. Stir in brown sugar, molasses, and honey. 

Add the raisins, diced apple, and the nuts.

Snugly place as many rolls as you need to cover the brown sugar mixture edge to edge in the oven.

Sprinkle the rolls liberally with cinnamon sugar.

Add 14-16 coals to the lid and bake for about 35-40 minutes.  Check and when the rolls begin to turn

golden brown remove from the heat. Let the oven cool to room temperature and flip it over onto a trivet. Remove oven and serve from the lid.

Serves 8-10

Enjoy!
Bruce & Vickie

Recipes

I'll start to publish a few recipes next week...If you have a favorite let me know though the comments section of the blog. And, do you want the backyard variety or the super high end recipes? Or in between?
Bruce Tracy
The Dutch Oven Baker

Liquids, sweeteners, salt and fats

Liquids...Water and milk are the most commonly used liquids. Water gives bread a crispier crust; milk provides a velvety texture and a bit of milk fat.
Sweeteners...Sugar, honey and molasses provide food for the yeast and encourage faster growth. Each enhances the flavor of the bread in it's own way and helps brown the crust.
Avoid artificial sweeteners as they don’t provide the sugar the yeast needs to do the job.
Salt...Salt inhibits the yeast and prevents the dough from rising too much too fast. Forgetting the salt may cause the bread to collapse if you let it rise too long. If you reduce the salt in a recipe, you’ll need to decrease both rising times, too.
It also seasons the finished bread.
Fat...Butter and vegetable oil make bread tender.
In addition to tenderness, butter adds flavor.

More bread stuff...

You can juggle the basic ratio a bit for different results. For example for flat bread or pizza dough you don’t want as much rise so you drop the yeast amount and add some oil.

You can shape the dough a hundred different ways. Braid it, make rolls, or make a boule, a round ball perfectly suited for your Dutch oven. After the last rise score the top with a few slashes to help it expand and pour the coals to it.

Another nice thing about Dutch ovens...If you want a hard crust like on a loaf of French bread or sourdough bread the Dutch oven provides the steam because the oven with a tight fitting lid keeps most of the water.

Proofing/Rising

Most bread recipes call for letting the dough rise twice. If you want bread with larger bubbles after it is baked, like pizza dough, let it rise just once but to more than double in bulk. If you want a very fine textured product, let it rise three times to less than double each time.Although most recipes tell you to let it rise until it doubles, for most white bread I limit the first rise to less than that in a warm draft-free place. This helps keep the whole bowl at the same temperature. 

For the second rise I spray the Dutch oven, put the lid on, and let it double. 
When I put the dough ball in for the first rise, I spray the bowl first with Pam, put the dough in the bowl and spray the dough as well. Then I put a piece of plastic wrap over the dough itself and cover the bowl with the traditional towel.

Wheat Flour

What distinguishes wheat flour from other flours like potato or oat flour?
It contains gluten. 
Without delving to far into the chemistry gluten is a protein that provides bread dough elasticity, making flour stretch without breaking. This enables the flour to trap the carbon dioxide bubbles that yeast releases. When you knead bread dough work it long enough to cause plenty of elasticity, i.e., the dough ball will be a bit rubbery. This causes the dough to rise. Voila! Bread!
When I make bread, I use bread or, better still, bread machine flour, it has higher gluten content.