Half an hour or so before baking the loaf, place your dutch oven in the oven get the heat up to 250C or 500F. Making sure the dutch oven is very hot is integral to getting oven spring.
When the oven and loaf are both ready, take a long piece of baking paper and lay it on the bench. It needs to be long enough that you can lower the loaf into the dutch oven without burning your arms. In my experience, dropping the loaf into the dutch oven results in a flat and gummy loaf.
Invert the loaf onto the centre of the baking paper, leaving the edges for lowering handles. Use a lame (sharp scoring blade) or a sharp knife to make a reasonably deep incision in the loaf. Google ‘bread scoring’ for some pattern ideas, or just keep it simple.
Get all your oven gear ready to work quickly for this next step. Carefully and quickly remove the super hot dutch oven from the oven. Shut the oven door while you work. Take the lid off and quickly lower in the bread. If you’re using an ice cube for extra oven spring, add it now. Pop the lid back on and quickly return the dutch oven to the oven. Turn the oven down to 200-220c.
Bake the loaf with the lid on for 40-50 minutes. If you prefer a less caramelised (aka dark) crust, leave the lid on a little longer. Once the time is up, remove the lid and continue to bake your loaf for another 40 or so minutes, or until the crust sounds hollow when you knock on it and is deeply caramelised brown in colour.
Once cooked, remove the loaf from the oven and baking paper and place it on a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely (3-4 hours AT LEAST) before slicing into it, as you can compress all the air in the loaf and end up with extremely gummy bread.
You can store the loaf in a bag or freeze it in slices.