Burnt Bottom of Dutch Oven Baked Loaves

I recently baked a loaf in my Dutch oven and put the dough onto a circle of parchment before loading it into the hot DO. I found the bottom crust to be less 'dark' than what usually happens with DO baked loaves.

One is to raise the level of the rack that the DO sits on so that the bottom of the DO is farther from the presumed heat source at the bottom of your oven.

The other is to shield the bottom of your DO. I use a pizza stone placed on a separate rack one slot below the one the DO sits on, but a sheet pan, a piece of foil and many other things should also work.

I have had this problem repeatedly, so you're not alone.  I have bought Lodge trivets and baked on those with parchment, with a pizza pan below, and if anything it was under-baked.  But that was a very wet, gooey, fermented porridge bread that was not very successful.

So I still haven't found the magic combination that works, but those are some things to try.

Is a bad heat conductor, my last try using a stainless steel baking sheet below the dutch oven helped a lot. 

in the bottom of the Dutch oven and the pizza stones on the rack below my Dutch ovens. I get a great bottom crust with no burnt spots and I tend to bake pretty dark. 

I use parchment, but I use a combo dutch oven and use the shallower part on the bottom. I don't heat that part, just the larger lid. For a second loaf, it is of course heated, but the parchment always seems to help.

to 450°F instead?   (and baking a few minutes longer)

and if still burning, drop it a little bit more.

450 and then remove the lid and bake convection at 425 for 5 minutes then remive the bread from the Do and finish in the stone = no more bunt bottoms

Hi Dabrownman- I know that this discussion is old, but I recently had a problem when baking the chocolate and cherry sourdough bread from Modernist Bread. The dough has no added sugar except for the dried cherries and chocolate chips, so the recipe states that it should be baked in the combo pot as any other levain bread. His method is to set the oven to 500, add the dough to the preheated combo bottom(lid), reduce the temp to 470 and leave covered for 45 min, uncover and bake 10 more minutes, cracking the oven door for the last 5 minutes of that time.  Because I had baked a previous plain sourdough and its bottom was a bit too dark, I reduced my temps to 475 and 450, but unfortunately the result was a chocolate cherry loaf that was burned on the bottom. I also don’t know at what point the bottom burned, since I did not check the bottom when I uncovered it.

I checked my oven temperature, and it appears to be accurate, so I looked for suggestions on TFL and came across your old suggestion. I just want some clarification. Do you place the combo pot on the stone, or is the stone on a lower rack, or do you add the stone cold when you take the partially baked loaf out of the pot? 

Thanks so much. I will really appreciate your thoughts!

-Caryn

Once the bread goes in the DO I put it back on the stone and the oven goes down to 450 F.  Then 20 minutes of steam with the lid on;  Then the lid comes off and the oven goes down to 425 F for 5 minutes and then the bread comes off the DO completely and finishes on the stone.  No more burnt bottoms.

Happy baking Caryn

showed slipping a reflective cake pan under the Dutch Oven to prevent burning.  Try it! 

Can find the post under:

I used to get scorched breadbut... Iload my oven from bread board with moderate layer of cornmeal! Problem solved!!

I am finally getting back to testing the solutions to bottoms burning using the DO combo method. I think possibly the most important variable might be placing the pot on the baking stone. I preheated the oven to 475, lowered it to 450 when I put the bread in covered DO in the oven. I then checked the loaf at 25, 30 and 45 minutes, pulling it out of the oven and lifting it up to see the bottom. At each time the bottom color was fine, so I left it covered for the whole 45 minutes. I then uncovered it for the last 15, cracking the oven door for the last 5. My theory is the baking stone did act like a diffuser, and at least contributed greatly to solving the problem. Of course, I sill need to repeat this procedure wither chocolate and cherry loaf to see if it will work as well.

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and I only get a slightly scorched bottom if I forget to turn oven down from 250°c (first 15 mins, lid on) to 230°c when I remove lid.

Mini’s suggestion sounds really good too. hope one of the solutions suggested in this thread works for you

Leslie

this time it worked, but I will continue to monitor this with every bake. Thanks for your reply, Leslie.

will always be susceptible to burning as the ingredient burns easily.  Ever notice the oven temps for chocolate cakes are lower?  Might want a good diffuser or a lower oven temp.  

One of my favourite diffuser solutions is to take a good sized piece of aluminum foil, crunch it up (not in a ball but as a sheet)  while it's laying flat on the counter using finger tips. Scrunch, pinch, shrink the foil size to about the size of the pan bottom and about an inch high..  Then place the pan (or a bigger one) onto the foil and press down evenly to flatten the foil to about one cm or 1/4" thick.  The foil mat can then be used over and over again under  pots for baking.  

Josh...I have bread books by Chad Robertson, Jeffry Hammelman and Peter Reinhart and somewhere along the line one of them said to  light layer of cornmeal on your breadboard before transfering to oven.This has ALWAYS worked for me, the cornmeal keeps bread from making direct contact with baking surface. Tried parchment, it burned and still got burnt bottom. THIS WORKS!!!

I'm sure a dutch oven burns the bottom because its the part of the loaf in contact with the sides. The thermostat in your oven is measuring the temperature of the air, but the metal surfaces, including your DO, will absorb and retain far more heat than the air inside the oven. Your oven setting might be 475 F but the metal surfaces, pizza stone, etc. are much, much higher temps. You will want crazy hot temperature on the bottom of your DO to get a big spring as you drop you loaf in, but once that crumb has opened up and the outside has hardened a little, take the loaf out of the DO. This is probably about 10 to 15 minutes into the bake. If the base on your loaf looks just how you like it, you could probably finish your bake on the wire shelves allowing the loaf to come up to temperature without burning the sugars on the base any further. 

I got a notice that this topic has been reopened, and since originally posting about this, I have solved my problem for the most part: I preheat the oven and pot to 475 F, then when I start baking the bread with the lid on. I change the temperature  to 445 F, then I uncover and use the convection setting on 435 F. I leave the bread on the parchment paper the whole time. The only recipe that I still have trouble with is the chocolate cherry bread. I may have to start with an even lower temperature for that formula.

To be clear, I set my oven temp to 475 and preheat the oven with a baking stone with the the lid and pot on it for an hour. Then I turn the dough from the rising basket onto parchment paper and then into the flat part of the combo pot. The parchment paper stays in the pot. When I put the pot in the oven, I immediately turn the oven down to 445 and bake for 45 minutes. I then uncover the pot and change the oven setting to 435 on the convection setting and bake for 5 to 10 minutes more.

With this method, I have not burned any of my standard sourdough breads, plus they come out with a wonderful exterior. I am still not sure the best method for the chocolate cherry bread. I think I probably should keep the temperature lower for that formula.

i hope this helps.

I bought a set of these on Amazon  With a strong set of cutters, I removed some of the legs so the rack sat about 1/4" above the bottom of the dutch oven surface

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