Dutch Oven Bread - Swirled

I made another attempt at swirled bread today. This time, I tried to do it differently. It tasted good, but it didn't swirl quite well enough for my satisfaction. Then my dog got to one of the loaf halves. I wasn't pleased!

I actually made two loves, but the recipe I'm including here is for one.

Dutch Oven Swirled Bread

12" Dutch Oven
10 coals below, 19-20 coals above

• 1 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 Tbsp yeast

• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup oil
• 4-5 cups flour

• 1 heaping Tbsp Cocoa
• 1 heaping Tbsp Coffee or Coffee substitute (I used Pero)
• 2 Tbsp Molasses

• 1-2 cups Flour, for the kneading
  

• 1 egg

I started out with the hot water, and the honey. Yeast activates best in water that's at about 110 ºF. I just make it very hot, because when you add the honey, it will cool considerably. Then, I added the yeast, and let that sit to foam up while I gathered the other ingredients.

I mixed everything in the second set into the the bowl with the first set, and just stirred it all up with the old wooden spoon. When I'm mixing at this stage, I tend to go with less flour, and I tend to add more in the kneading process.

With it all stirred up into a gloppy goo, I separated them into two equal batches. Into one, to be the dark swirl, I added all of the third set ingredients. Then, i kneaded each batch separately, adding more flour as I went to keep it from sticking, and going until each one passed the windowpane test. Then I set each one aside to raise.

In about an hour to an hour and a half, they were ready. The dark one raised more, I think because of the extra sugar in the molasses.

Once they'd risen, I rolled each one out flat and shaped them into squares. I put one on top of the other, like stacking paper. I rolled them up, and then kind of mushed the ends toward the middle so it was a little more ball shaped. I put that into the oiled dutch oven to proof.

While it was proofing, I lit up some coals. Once the coals were lit, I put about 20-25 coals on top of the lid, to pre-heat it.

By the time that the lid was heated, the bread was nicely risen in the dutch oven. I coated the loaf in the beaten egg, to give it a nice sheen on top. I took it outside, made a ring of coals and put the lid on, with the proper amount of coals. From there, I just replenished the coals as necessary, and turned the lid and the oven every 15 minutes or so. I baked it to an internal temperature of 190-200º.

Then, I took off the lid and brought the dutch oven in to cool and let the bread cool with it. We served it up with the dinner my wife's cousin brought over. Yummy!