[Sca-cooks] Dutch Oven Cooking - OOP

[Stefan li Rous]

Bear suggested:
<<< While one can bake the bread on the floor of the oven, I have  
found that
using a small cooling rack with a pie tin on it for baking produces an  
air
gap and more even heating of the dough. >>>

I would highly recommend using an air space. In the Boy Scouts it was  
common to use one of the metal plates sitting on top of three small  
rocks.

Early on in my Scouting career my patrol decided to cook apple  
turnovers in a Dutch oven. We didn't know about needing this air  
space. The tops of the turnovers were nicely browned. The bottoms were  
charred. We could not get the burned on bottoms of the turnovers off  
of the bottom of the Dutch oven at the event and had to bring it home  
for further washing. Soap and water and detergents didn't work. It  
took a hammer and a cold chisel to finally get the last of the charred  
bits off of the Dutch oven. This was an cast aluminum Dutch oven,  
rather than cast iron Dutch oven, but I doubt it makes a difference in  
this.

We have discussed cooking medieval recipes in Dutch ovens previously  
and I saved some of the conversation. However, I have yet to create  
and web a message file in the Florilegium on this.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****