Bread baking and a Dutch Oven

I've been making extra-tangy sourdough bread with a sourdough starter I had gotten from King Arther Flour company but it wasn't quite as perfectly awesome as sourdough bread should be.  It had good flavor but I was getting these dull loaves.  Though I'm sure my kneading skills still need work, when I visited Linda and had the bread she baked in the dutch oven, I knew I had to try it as soon as I was gifted with a dutch oven for my birthday.

The recipe makes two loaves so I baked one in a preheated dutch oven (put it the oven while it preheated) and one on the baking sheet as advised in the recipe.  The baking sheet loaf was done first after 30 minutes so we started eating it, then at 45 minutes I checked in on the loaf in the dutch oven.  My jaw dropped when I opened the lid.  Look at this beauty--it's like a magazine!

Here's a little side-by-side comparison (sorry, we obviously still ate the less amazing loaf when it came out of the oven).  The one baked in the dutch oven just had an amazing golden crispy crust--I just wanted to tear it apart with my hands--unlike my grayish other loaf.

It's hard to tell but I think it may have rose a little more than the baking sheet loaf as well.  I would still love it to be even more holey but this was an excellent loaf.

If you're not convinced to try baking a loaf in a dutch oven, I highly recommend trying it out. I'm definitely a convert. I can't imagine not baking bread in the dutch oven again!