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Dutch Oven Bread is hands-down the easiest way to make homemade whole wheat bread. No kneading, no fancy equipment! Just a few minutes of prep and a handful of ingredients and you can easily create a beautiful loaf of artisan whole wheat bread right at home!
This No Knead Whole Wheat Bread is crusty on the outside, tender on the inside, and full of hearty flavor. It is the perfect starter bread recipe as it is simple, forgiving, and rewarding.
Kristen's Keys for No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread
While an exceptionally easy recipe, I have a few key pointers to keep in mind before starting.
- You must use a Dutch Oven. This no-knead bread must be baked in a 3½ to 6-quart heavy-duty dutch oven that can withstand temperatures up to 450℉ (230℃). No other pan will conduct heat in the same way.
- Measure flour with care. A kitchen scale is the most accurate way to measure flour when making bread (or ANY baked good). If you don't have a scale, use a spoon to scoop the flour into the measuring cup, rather than scooping directly from the canister.
- Use active dry yeast NOT rapid rise or Instant yeast. We want a slow and steady rise.
- The flour is interchangeable. Whole wheat flour gives this bread a hearty flavor, but you can use white wheat flour or all-purpose flour for a lighter texture.
- Parchment paper is optional but helpful. It makes lifting the bread in and out of the Dutch oven seamless. Just be sure to use parchment paper safe up to 450℉ (230℃).
- Plan to make the dough at least 8 hours prior to baking the bread. You need time to let the yeast work it's magic.
Happy Cooking! xo Kristen
5-star Reader Review
This is the absolute best no knead bread recipe I have ever tried. It's hearty and moist and any add-in you throw at it turns out wonderful! -LouAnne⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
How to Make No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread
Making bread at home can feel intimidating. But with this easy no knead whole wheat bread recipe and my step-by-step guidance, there is no need to be intimidated. 😉
Step One: Measure Flour
The most accurate way to measure the flour is to place a mixing bowl on a kitchen scale, zero it out, and set it to measure in grams. Scoop flour into the bowl until the scale reads 500 grams.
👉🏻No Scale? Lightly spoon flour into a measuring cup and level. You will need 3¾ cups of whole wheat flour.
Step Two: Combine Dough
Add the yeast and salt to the mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Add the warm water, and using a wooden spoon or spatula, stir until just combined. It is meant to be a shaggy (slightly damp) dough.
👉🏻Your water should be between 100-115℉ (38-46℃ ). Any colder water won't activate the yeast, while hotter water can kill the yeast. Use a digital thermometer for accurate results.
Step Three: Let Rest
Cover the mixing bowl with a clean kitchen towel or piece of plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for at least 8 hours or up to 18 hours. I find 12 hours to be perfect! This slow rise develops incredible flavor and gives the dough that beautiful airy structure.
Step Four: Preheat the Oven and Dutch Oven
When you are ready to bake the bread, place the Dutch Oven in the oven and turn the oven to 450°F (230℃). Preheating the Dutch oven helps create that signature crusty exterior.
👉🏻 Using an Enameled Dutch Oven? A few brands state not to preheat empty (most say preheating in the oven is fine, just not on the stove--check your manual carefully). Simply skip the preheat and add an additional 5-10 minutes to the baking time.
Step Five: Shape Dough
While the oven is preheating, use the time to shape the dough. Remember it is meant to be a rustic dough, so don't worry about it being perfect. The less you work the dough, the better.
- Place a piece of parchment paper onto the counter and very lightly dust with flour.
- Turn the dough onto the parchment paper and shape into a circle with lightly floured hands.
- Brush off excess flour from dough and parchment paper and let rest until oven is fully preheated.
Step Six: Bake
Carefully transfer the shaped dough into the preheated Dutch oven, cover, and bake for 30 minutes. Then uncover and bake for an additional 20 minutes, or until the crust is deep golden brown.
👉🏻 Unsure if your bread is fully cooked? Stick a digital thermometer into the center of the loaf. The internal temperature should be between 207-209°F (97-98℃).
Step Seven: Cool
The hardest part about making this bread is waiting for it to cool! But in order to prevent it from being gummy and next to impossible to slices, you need to let it fully cool. Immediately remove the bread from the Dutch Oven and let cool on a cooling rack for at least 30 minutes before trying to slice.
Recipe Notes & Modifications
- Vary the Flour: While this recipe is written using whole wheat flour, you can swap it out for whole white wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, bread flour, all-purpose flour, or a combination of flours. Whatever flour used, it must measure 500 grams. And because different varieties of flour have different weights, a scale is critical here. Gluten-free flour blends and self-rising flour are not recommended!
- Optional Additions: Add up to and no more than 1 cup of chopped nuts (walnuts, almonds, or pistachios), seeds (pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds or sunflower seeds), and/or dried fruit (raisins or dried cranberries) to the flour mixture before adding water to the dough. (Or try my cranberry walnut bread recipe.)
- Dutch Oven Size & Recommendations: A smaller Dutch oven yields a higher, rounder loaf, while a larger Dutch causes the dough to spread more. While still delicious, the bread will be flatter. I prefer a 4-quart Dutch oven for a beautiful tall loaf. And while Staub brand is my favorite, Lodge dutch ovens work well and are much more affordable.
- Storage Tips: Once fully cooled, wrap well in plastic wrap or place in airtight container. Store at room temperature and use within 3 days. Alternatively, wrap well in foil, place in freezer-safe bag, and freeze for up to 1 month. Defrost at room temperature. For best results, slice as needed rather than slicing all at once--this will prevent the bread from drying out.
Serving Suggestions
This artisan-style whole wheat bread is heartier and chewier than my honey whole wheat bread and reminds me a bit of the texture of sourdough bread. It is is perfect toasted, slathered with butter, or served alongside one of following cozy soups:
No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread
Video
Ingredients
- 500 grams whole wheat flour, ~3¾ cups
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon dry active yeast
- 2 cups warm water, between 100-115℉
Instructions
- Place a large mixing bowl on a kitchen scale, change units to grams, and zero it out. Add whole wheat flour until the scale reads 500 g (for 500 grams.) To measure flour without a scale, fluff the flour in its container, then spoon into a measuring cup, leveling off the excess. Measure out 3¾ cups whole wheat flour and place in mixing bowl (see recipe notes if using a different variety of flour).
- Add 2 teaspoons kosher salt and 1 teaspoon dry active yeast to the flour and mix well to incorporate. Add 2 cups warm water to the flour mixture and use a wooden spoon or spatula to mix until the flour is fully moistened. Resist the urge to overmix. Stop mixing once there are no longer any dry pockets of flour.
- Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel, and let rest at room temperature for at least 8 hours or up to 18 hours.
- After the dough has risen, turn out the dough onto a lightly floured piece of parchment paper or lightly floured surface. Lightly flour your hands and then roughly shape the dough into a circle. The dough will be sticky! Brush excess flour off the dough ball and parchment paper and let the dough rest while the oven preheats.
- Place the Dutch oven pan, fitted with a lid, into the oven and then set to preheat the oven to 450℉ (230℃), with the pan in the oven.
- Once the oven is preheated, carefully remove the pan from the oven and carefully drop the shaped bread into the heated pan.
- Place the lid on the Dutch oven and bake for 30 minutes covered. Carefully remove the lid and bake for an additional 20 minutes, or until the bread is golden and the internal temperature of the bread reaches 207-209°F (97-98℃).
- Remove bread from dutch oven and let cool on wire rack for 30-45 minutes before slicing and serving.
Equipment
- kitchen scale the most accurate way to measure flour!
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This post was originally published in 2017 but has been updated in 2025 .
Hi Kristen
Can I use my 8 quart stock pot for this bread? It's safe up to 550 degrees but I don't know if the size will rule it out. It's Cuisinart.
Thanks.
Jill
Hi Jillene. The size is not an issue. My only concern would be that the bottom of your of the pan may not be as thick and therefore conduct the heat differently.
I have not made this recipe yet because I do not have the kind of dutch oven that you have. Mine is a 1940's Ware Ever Aluminum Dutch Oven. Will my Dutch oven work?
Hi Teresa! I did some research on that pan, and I can not find if it is safe for 450 degree oven. I think the pan may be too thin and if the knobs are plastic it is certainly not safe. sorry!
Ok, 2 questions today.
1. I have a Wagon Ware Magnalite Dutch Oven can I use this one to made the bread?
2. Can you use an Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven?
Hi Teresa! Either option will work. The Wagon Ware may result in a more oval shaped loaf though. I hope you enjoy!
My bread turned out extraordinarily dense and when I cut it, it was impossible to cut the bottom because it was so hard and the top crust fell off. The taste was fine, though. What do you think could be the problems?
Hi Mia. It sounds like one of three things happened--your yeast was old and did not work properly, your bread needed longer to rise (this is likely if you let it rise in cooler area) OR you measured your flour with a heavy hand. It is best to scoop your flour into a measuring cup with a spoon to ensure your don't use too much flour. Those tips should prevent dense bread in the future.
My yeast was very new and I spooned in my flour. I covered my dough rising with a damp towel that was wet with cold water, do you think that would be enough to make the temperature difference?
Oh yes, it may have been the wet cold water that made a difference. I am sorry for that!
This is literally the easiest bread I have ever made and it's delicious. My kids like it. I can't believe something so good and nutritional can be so easy. thank you. I will make this over and over again.
I was so excited to try this recipe, at I'd made a white loaf in my Dutch oven last week and it turned out perfectly. But when I took the bowl out this morning, it had risen (not as much as I'd expected, though) and the dough was so wet there was no way it could be formed into a ball (it actually looked like there was some liquid in the bottom of the bowl). I weighed the flour when I made the dough, and the water was the same temp I've used for other breads. The only thing I did differently was to cover with plastic wrap instead of a damp towel. I put it in the oven overnight with the light on. Could I have covered it too tightly with the wrap? Was the oven too warm? I'm pretty new to baking bread, so not too good at troubleshooting yet...
Hi Pam! It is hard for me to say exactly what happened, but I have 3 thoughts. What type of flour did you use? If you used white wheat, you may have needed an additional 1/4 cup. Also, I don't weigh my flour, but instead scoop into measuring cup (this is so that everyone can follow directions, not just those with kitchen scales), so there may have been a difference there as well. And yes, the oven may have been too warm, because this is a slow rise, it should be at room temperature. When placed in the oven with the light on, most ovens can reach over 100 degrees, which is just too warm for that long of a rise. Hope that helps.
Hi!
Pam - you may have suffocated your yeast with the plastic wrap, and over-risen the dough with an oven that was too warm. Yeast is a living organism that exhales carbon dioxide and doesn't like to be trapped with that CO2 under plastic any more than you or I would. And the long rise time on this recipe is really best at room temp or even a bit cooler. I've even made this and left it in the fridge overnight!
I've had good luck with a slight recipe variation - 1.5 c water to 3 cups white whole wheat flour plus 2 tablespoons high-gluten flour. I mix it up in the bowl for my stand mixer, and then just cover it with a pot lid that happens to fit the stand mixer bowl. It keeps it from drying out, while still allowing the yeast to "breathe".
I also don't bother to do any shaping - I just dump the dough onto a piece of parchment paper, and lift the whole thing into the Dutch oven - less flour, less mess to clean up!
Not sure what happened. I followed this recipe to a T, but my bread came out like a brick...being small, hard, and extremely dense. Perhaps too much yeast, (my usual whole wheat bread recipe uses just 1/4 tsp. of active dry yeast.) or foregoing the second rise. I gently formed my deflated dough into a round shape, put it into the pre-heated Dutch oven...and it came out looking just as it had going in.
Hi Anolis! I am sorry you did not have success with this recipe. This is not an issue anyone has had before, but let me help you troubleshoot it. My best guess is that it did in fact have to so with your yeast or rise time. If your water was too hot or too cold and/or your yeast was older, it may have not been activated to allow the flour to rise correctly. Another issue may have been that if you scooped your flour from your canister, instead of spooning into your measuring cup, it may have resulted in more flour, which would make result in a denser bread. After the overnight rise, the bread should have risen to at least double the size and the dough should be light, and full of bubbles. If that did not happen, it had to do with the yeast or mis-measurement of flour. I hope those tips help you to perfect this recipe.
Thank you for the tips. Rise time may have been a factor here, as the dough seemed to have risen and fallen overnight. Maybe I’ll try this recipe again with a shorter fermentation time, or pop it in the fridge to slow it down.
Especially in the heat of the summer, that could be an issue if your house is warm. I would recommend to start with shorter fermentation time, before popping the in the fridge 🙂
This sounds great! I recently made a very similar version, which uses the Instant Pot to rise the dough; Using the cookingcarnival recipe it takes only 4 hours to rise in the Instant Pot; I went from flour to finished baked bread in about 6 hours. I used white bread flour for the cookingcarnival recipe. Question: would using the instant pot for this bread work? I don't know if using the whole wheat flour (which is my preference) would change the rise time in the instant pot. Thank you for taking the time to read my message and for your response.
Hi Shirley, I am so sorry I misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking if you could BAKE the bread. So yes, I would think whole wheat bread would change the rise time, but only ever so slightly. I would check at 4 hours and go from there 🙂 I hope you enjoy!