When you live in the country, the power sometimes goes out. This almost always happens when it has been raining in the winter, it is cold, and you have a million things to do. You certainly don’t have time to figure out how to bake bread without an oven or electricity.
There are several different ways to bake bread without an oven. Solar ovens, flatbread in a pan over a fire, baking in a tin can over coals, and baking in a dutch oven are just some of the ways you can make your bread when you have no working oven.
Our favorite way is baking in a dutch oven. It is actually very simple and once you’ve done it you might wonder why you didn’t do it this way before.
I love baking bread this way during the winter because it makes multiple uses of something. I like things that are multipurpose. While warming the house with my wood stove, I can bake bread, brew tea, and make a nice pot of soup or stew.
Baking bread in a Dutch oven on your wood stove is so easy you might not want to go back to doing it any other way. For this, I like to use an enameled dutch oven that I picked up at a yard sale. It makes clean up a lot easier.
This is best done when the fire has died down. A few metal canning rings under the dutch oven will help with air circulation around the bread as it bakes.
Crusty Bread Recipe:
- 6-1/2 cups flour
- 3 cups warm water
- 1-1/2 tablespoon yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup olive oil
Mix all ingredients. Allow bread to rest and rise for 2 hours. Then refrigerate. Set Dutch oven with lid on wood stove. Place dough in the Dutch oven. Allow to rise for another 15 minutes, uncovered. Use a thermometer to check the temperature inside the dutch oven. Once your thermometer reaches 350 degrees Fahrenheit, bake for 40-55 minutes, covered.
Have you ever made bread without electricity? How did you make it?