This is a great recipe. I conducted a little kitchen test using this recipe. I broke off two balls of three day old dough. I let them both rise the sixty minutes required. While I was resting the dough, I preheated my oven to 500*. I used both my pizza stone and my dutch oven. The first loaf was baked in the oven, following the NY Times instructions. The second loaf was baked on the stone with a pan of water for steam. Both loaves were beautiful, both had dark brown crusts. The bread baked in the dutch oven had a very crisp crust and an almost perfect crumb. My recommendation is give the dutch oven a try, you might really enjoy the results. Thanks so much for posting the results of your experiment here - much appreciated by all of us avid bread bakers. I happen to love a good cast iron dutch oven - I'm lucky to have cast iron cookware over 100 years old, and it cooks and bake like a dream... PJH

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