Baking Bread in Dutch Oven with Hairline Crack
I recently bought a ceramic slow cooker insert at a thrift store. It has a glass top and is the perfect shape for using as a Dutch oven in baking bread, which I do regularly. When I got home, my husband found a hairline crack going down the side. I’d like to know if this is still usable. Here’s the method I currently use with my cast iron/enamel coated Dutch oven: I preheat the oven to 500F with empty Dutch oven, with the lid on. When it’s reaches temperature, I take my shaped dough from the fridge where it’s been all night in a bowl on parchment paper. I slash it, then lift it by the parchment paper and place it in the Dutch oven. Sometimes I slip some ice cubes under the parchment before putting the lid on, although I could skip this step if it’s not recommended.
Question: would this procedure be ok for the Dutch oven described above, with the hairline crack?
Best Answer
I would not use it for this purpose.
Your main issue with using ceramic bread cloches (the standard ceramic "Dutch oven") with the kind of recipe you have is thermal shock: you're heating the vessel to 500F, then depositing a mass of very wet cold dough inside it. This can often result in a cloche cracking. This is why cloche manufacturers direct the owner to heat the cloche with the dough in it.
In your case, you're taking a vessel that was never meant for temperatures above 220F, which already has a crack in it, and preforming that routine. I'd fully expect it to crack in half as soon as you introduce the dough.
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Can I use a cracked Dutch oven?
You want to look closely because the crack doesn't always go straight through to the cast iron. Never use an enameled Dutch oven with a chip in the cooking region, that is because it may continue chipping, which can put sharp pieces of enamel in your food.How do you fix a crack in a Dutch oven?
And if you find a crack in your Dutch oven, you should refrain from using it until it's repaired....Here is a general list of steps that you can follow to fix chips and cracks in your Dutch oven:Why did my bread loaf crack?
Dough is Too Wet or Too Dry If your dough is too dry it can form a crust before it had time to rise in the oven. This will cause the crust of your bread to crack and let the air out of the bread wherever it cracks and expand those cracks into bigger cracks or \u201cbursts\u201d.THE BEST - No Fail - Dutch Oven No-Knead Bread
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Images: Jonathan Borba, Felicity Tai, Felicity Tai, ready made