In Search Of The Perfect Dutch Oven for Baking No-Knead Bread

If the New York times no-knead bread recipe inspired you to give baking your own bread a try, as it did me, you know one of the secrets to making it work is a cast iron dutch oven.  So I went searching and it turns out there were only a few options available that offered a decent balance between price quality and result!

When it comes to purchasing most anything I tend to be just the tiniest bit obsessive, maybe obsessive is not the best word… let’s go with very through about finding the best product for my dollar, mixed with a healthy dose of frugal.  I am a big believer in you get what you pay for, and always look to balance a good price with long-term value, if something is going to cost me 50% more it needs to of high enough quality so I will not have to replace it for at least twice as long as the lower quality item or you don’t earn my dollars!

I always prefer to buy from my local merchants, but lets face it sometimes they either can’t or simply don’t want to compete and in the global economy “local” starts to become relative.

Amazon is always my first stop for product information, not because I prefer them as a store but because they have excellent product reviews and their site is set up to suggest alternative products, just the thing for some great comparison shopping. If you want to know if a product is crap or not I really suggest reading the reviews on amazon, they don’t always have the best prices, and their website can be a bit annoying, but for honest feedback from people who have actually purchased something you are thinking of purchasing, can’t beat it.

After doing just a small bit of reading it was apparent that I wanted an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, I didn’t want to have to mess with seasoning one or maintaining a seasoned one, lest we forget I live in an apartment & seasoning a large bit of cast iron will be a smoke-fest… you are welcome neighbors!

After a couple of hours searching on the interweb the 2 best alternatives appeared to be, the Le Creuset or the Lodge Dutch Oven, there are a couple of other brands on amazonland but after reading the reviews I narrowed it down to these two, the reviews of the other brands were a mixed bag ranging from good to really bad and way too many poor quality control comments, it seemed like a crap shoot, you either get lucky or you don’t.

I also did some searches on google products and a couple of other shopping comparison sites, most of the same brands came up that I had found on amazon and not much more. The only other real contender I came up with was one from walmart, it had pretty good reviews, was about the same size and the price was about the same cost as the lodge, but the deal buster for me was the fact that the walmart product was a Chinese import and the lodge was made here in the US by a company that’s been around a 100+years (founded in 1896).  I do prefer to buy locally as I mentioned, but its all proportional these days, compared to china “Made in the USA” is local!  Result, I pass on the walmart knock-off, but being the cheap bastard I am if there had been a really big difference in the price I would have gone in that direction, but price being pretty equal, “Made in the USA” it is.

Le Creuset is the cast iron you see on all the cooking shows, the cooking vessel of choice of the celebrity chef.  Based on all the reviews I have read and some interweb based research Le Creuset always seems to come up as the best, but not by much at all compared to the lodge, and by far it is the most expensive as you can see from the link you would be lucky to find one for around $200.00 on-line + shipping and around $300.00 if you are shopping retail.  If you are someone who wants the best and have the budget to support it, then by all means buy the Le Creuset, but if you are someone like myself who needs to balance quality with budget, then it is time to do a little common sense decision-making.

I am going to way in here with a bit of opinion though, even if I had buckets of cash, I can’t see buying the Le Creuset, we aren’t splitting the atom here, we are talking cast iron, just how big a difference can there be when it comes to baking off a loaf of bread for gods sake.  If you really need to spend $300.00 and are seriously thinking of buying the Le Creuset don’t, get a Lodge Dutch Oven and donate the extra $250.00 to your local food bank!

This Lodge is the 6-Quart Dutch Oven I purchased, it was under $50.00 and came with free shipping (that’s a real gift considering the weight of the thing).  No-one could compete with Amazons price and even if they were a few dollars less the shipping cost was high enough (in a couple of instances almost $25.00, seriously!) to take me right back to amazon.

I have been using it for about 6 months now and frankly I love it, it turns out loaf after loaf of lovely crispy bread and I have ended up using it for so many other things that I just ordered a second one, I find myself wanting to use it to cook with at the same time I want to bake bread.  Do I think I would be getting a different result if I had popped an additional $250.00 for a fancy French name?  Not for one second, I am very satisfied with my purchase.

Lets Talk Knobs!

When you bake bread like this you need the dutch oven as hot as possible, depending on the recipe you preheat the oven to 450-500 degrees. The knobs that come on the dutch ovens (regardless of brand) are some sort of high heat polymer, but they can’t take much over 350-400 degrees without breaking down or off-gassing.  The knob needs to be replaced with a stainless steel one before you can use the dutch oven to bake bread in.

On the amazon product page for all of the dutch ovens it will suggest the purchase of the Le Creuset stainless steel Knob for $10.00.  I found one for $51.35 on ebay (I kid you not, Click Here for a photo).  I was in such disbelief I had to screen cap it, look in the lower right corner of the photo and notice it shows 1 Sold, and even better the feature graphic right next to the photo shows it ON SALE at 29% off, can you say: dumb-ass bought himself quite a knob! Clearly someone with far more money than brains.

HELLO…… let’s have a little common sense, it’s a fricken steel knob!  I picked one up a stainless steel cabinet knob on ebay for $1.00 with free shipping.  Then I headed off to the local hardware store with the knob in pocket to pick up the proper size screw and washers to attach it . Total paid $1.27 for knob and hardware, job done, and it works great. Here is a link to steel knobs on ebay, I picked up a “T” shaped one.

Bottom Line

If you want a great quality  fairly priced product, get the Lodge Dutch Oven (buy it on-line for your best deal)… If you want an unfairly priced import that will do your ego more good than it will do your loaf, get the Le Creuset and buy it full retail, after all reality is, it’s about your ego and feeling special, so might as well spend $300.00 rather than the $200ish you might get it for on-line so you feel extra special and elite.  I’m being a bit sarcastic about the french pot, but honestly for baking bread or really most anything will the extra $250.00 get you better results, I would be hard pressed to believe it!  If you really need to have something french, then get a La Cloche.

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