Emile HenryItalian Bread Loaf Baker | Charcoal

I was reluctant to buy this expansive baker because I saw some reviews saying the item arrived broken, some complaining that it's hard to remove from the oven, and some saying the bread sticks to the pan. But I'm glad I took the plunge and bought it because it makes a great loaf and I've had none of those problems.Today I made a 6-cups of flour loaf of no-knead rye bread, using the Bittman technique for no-knead bread as described in his book, How to Bake Everything. The result was perfect.Bittman's technique involves heating the empty, covered pan in the pre-heating oven for at least a half hour before the dough is ready to bake. When ready, you remove the pan from the oven and dump the dough into the pan, close it up, and place in the oven. It's not as tricky as it sounds because you let the dough rise on a towel, so you pick up the towel and dump it in.When you preheat the pan in this manner, it does NOT need to be greased or floured. The baked bread will easily fall out of the pan, no sticking. That is true for my pyrex bowl that I usually bake bread in, and evidently it is true for ceramic as well.I do not have any trouble moving the pan into or out of the oven with oven mitts. I wonder if the people who found that difficult have stiffer oven mitts so they cannot get a grip?? It might be tricky to remove just the cover to brown the bread, without removing the whole pan from the oven. Perhaps that is what people were trying to do. And yes, that would be easier to do if there was a knob on the top of the cover. But regardless of which vessel I'm using to bake the bread, I take the whole pan out of the oven if/when I want to remove the cover for further browning. That feels safer and easier to me no matter what I'm baking the bread in.I love the the loaf shape and large size of this pan. Now sandwiches made with my homemade bread will fit in standard sandwich containers for packed lunches. The fact that you can make a 6-cup loaf means you don't have to bake as often. I'll be cutting each loaf into thirds and freezing them in separate bags. Couldn't be more pleased.I wish it wasn't so expensive but I bake a lot of bread so I guess it is worth it.

This pan is beautiful! It has definitely helped up my bread game! I have been making sourdough bread for years – I primarily use the formulas from Ken Forkish’s book Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. I make one batch at a time which yields dough of a little more than 1 kg, and bake in two batches in a round, Lodge, cast-iron Dutch oven. These loaves do come out beautifully – but the boule shape is sometimes difficult for making sandwiches (Some slices are larger. Some slices are smaller)Enter the Emile Henry Italian bread loaf baker, and not only do I get beautifully shaped bread that slices into perfect sandwich slices, it has also shortened my bake time since the entire 1 kg of dough will fit in here and bake all at the same time! The crust doesn’t have quite as much crunch as a loaf, coming out of a preheated Dutch oven, but given that I am using these for sandwiches that has actually worked out pretty well. I bake at 450° for just about an hour – have still been using a temperature probe just to make sure it’s done, but this pan has been performing beautifully. One word of caution – I did have one loaf start to stick to the inside of the lid. Thankfully, I noticed before I baked it and was able to change directions, but that would’ve been a bit of a mess. With a little bit of butter and flour coating on the inside of the bottom pan, I have not had any problems getting the loaf out or having it stick to the pan.Overall, I love it. It is a bit expensive and maybe if you only casually make bread, it might not be worth it? That is subjective though. If you watch, you can definitely get it on sale I got mine for around 40% off just before Christmas. If you are into bread-making, and looking for a large pan to make sandwich loaves, go for it – I don’t think you will be disappointed!

A friend has one and when I saw hers, I knew I needed one. It makes perfect loaves with nice crust. Good buy!

Can not wait to use this. Arrived quickly

Paid the steep price for what should be a quality bread dutch oven. Shattered in the oven on the first bake. Um, shouldn't a bread baking product be able to be baked? Went through the hassle of re-packaging, printing return label, and driving the hour to closest UPS drop-off. Exchange arrived BROKEN in the box. Also, was delivered to wrong house, so by the time it got to me, and I got around to opening package, the return date had closed (rolling eye emoji). So now I'm stuck with an unusable expensive useless POS. Reached out to manufacturer to ask that they stand by their product and allow me to return (missed window by two weeks); haven't gotten a response.

Nice

I love the shape and not needing to preheat however I need more practice as I’m not getting the crust color that I get when removing the top for second half of baking. It is a beautiful design and I’m sure I’ll get the technique

Was excited to receive this and start my sourdough loaves. It was very difficult to get out of the oven since it's heavy and hot. It then slipped out of my hands because there are no handles. It cooked the loaf well and it's nice however, there is a crack now.