Bread making - New or Old Methods???

2006 - the article that started the revolution of making bakery quality bread at home

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html

and, in 2014, the video that illustrates the approach - and the result

https://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/1194817104184/no-knead-bread.html

3 cups flour (all purpose is ok)
1/4 tsp of yeast
1-1/4 tsp salt
1-1/2 cups water

Converting this to grams, we get
360 g flour
.7 g yeast
7 g salt
360 g water

In the 2006 article, the author addresses a couple of the keys and a couple of the 'difficulties' of this approach.

For the Home Baker making a single loaf at a time - dealing with 'plopping' a couple pounds of dough into a 500º dutch oven is a little risky.  The video shows the 'inventor' of the process doing this - and I am not sure that it is something that most home bakers want to try.   Then, dealing with the hot covered dutch oven with a couple pounds of dough in it is a challenge for most home bakers as well - it is awkward, heavy and hot.

But, the resulting loaf is beautiful and of high quality - simply from flour, salt, water and yeast.

For the Micro Bakery (making 3+ loaves at a time) - as the article sets forth, this takes up more space in the oven, and requires a supply of dutch ovens - as well as dealing with multiple large, hot  and heavy pots.

Compromise??
A process that creates a fantastic (10 points on a scale of 10) result isn't any good if people won't use it for fear of getting burned.  How can we get most of the benefits but increase the ease of application?   That is, can we simplify the process and still get a loaf that is an 8 on a 10 point scale?

I think so - and have a couple of approaches.
First, using this approach with any oven safe covered pan can get most of the benefits of this approach.  I have found that the pan MUST be sized to fit the dough.  Or, the proper amount of dough MUST be used for the pan being used.  My covered casserole Cephalon pan (oven safe) is 3 qts.  a recipe with 300g of flour works well.  A larger dough mass would over rise in this sized pan.  A larger pan with this much dough would probably flatten out and end up with a loaf that was round, but not tall.

So, using a lighter weight pan with matched dough ball would work well.  Still, preheating the pan and 'plopping' in the dough make burns a potential threat.

Second, is to use a basket (or banetton) to allow the formed dough to rise at room temperature and then to load that dough into a pre heated oven (either on a baking stone or on a two layer inverted baking tray or pan (to layers in order to insulate a bit from the heat).  A pan of water (either using an iron skillet or a pie tin) placed on the bottom of the oven to provide steam (I use a bottle mister as well for the first  two 5 minute intervals.

dough rising in a banetton

Dough finished rising - ready for the oven

view from side

The second approach uses a basket, mister and pie pan that is not needed in the case of the first approach.  One must also form and slash the dough ball (slashing shows the bread where it can expand).   This approach probably yields an 8 on our 10 point scale, but eliminates the heavy, 500º dutch oven being moved from counter to oven and then back again.  It also allows 4 1# loaves on an oven rack rather than two inside dutch ovens.  And, we have no dutch ovens to clean and store.

Here is an example of the result from the second approach

top view