Important finding from the bread recipe:
1. It was delicious
2. I used too big of a dutch oven. The bread dough spread out to a large blob.
3. More rising time to develop gluten and/or more flour could have given me a stronger dough ball that would hold together and bake in a round shape rather than a flattened blob.
4. We will be making this again. Probably with an overnight rise.
Glad to hear it tasted good!
On your findings, similar to my initial tries. I initially used my Lodge 5 quart Dutch oven, which worked fine for 6-7 cups of flour. The amount of dough was enough to "fill up" that oven, and get a higher loaf. However that's too much bread for me to eat before it goes bad, so I started making 4 cup loaves, but in that Dutch oven, they looked closer to pizza than to bread. I ended up finding the perfect size and shape Dutch oven at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FGBTQD0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1No longer available on Amazon, and that's a horrible photo. It's shaped more like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RWL5T6/ref=sbl_dpx_B08FHZ74D3_0At 3 quarts, it's perfect for a four cup loaf, which rises just about to the top of the oven and creates a good size for slicing into (large) sandwich slices.
I would definitely switch containers before I made the dough firmer. I experimented with that a bit, but found following the recipe regarding "wet(ish)" dough is better than going to a drier dough. I use a dough hook in the Kitchen-Aid, and add water until the dough "cleans up the bowl" if that makes sense - just moist enough that it picks up all the flour and almost leaves the bowl clean, then just add a touch more water until there is a little wet dough at the bottom of the bowl. I initially went even wetter, but found that was too wet for me.
Oh, if it helps, I just measured my 3 qt and it is 4" high, and 8.5" diameter.
Oh #2: In my recipe, that amount bakes (ovens vary) at 425deg for 40-45 minutes with the lid on, then another 5-10 minutes with the lid off to get a really nice crust. I look for about a 200-210 deg internal temp to take it out of the oven.