Stilly, a Römertopf is not a Dutch oven. You can’t use it with direct heat — on the stove-top or in the coals of a fire — where a Dutch oven is fully functional and sometimes at its best. Because it’s made of terra cotta, a Römertopf (“Roman pot” in German) must go into an enclosed baking oven.

I’m intrigued by differences between Canadian, British and American terms for common household things. The appliance I call a stove is usually a “cooker” in Britain and a “range” in the States. If I know that the house does not have a furnace for central heating, I might call the heat-producing thing in the kitchen a “cookstove” because there may well be a space heater that the householder calls a stove, often qualified as a “wood stove”. Recently, I’ve noticed texts by Americans that use the word “oven” to indicate the thing I call a stove or a cookstove.

But a Dutch oven? It takes a lot of reading and cooking to figure that out (if knowing the “why” of things is as important to you as it is to me). It ain’t a Dutch oven unless you can make bread in it outdoors, in a firepit with a heap of coals on the lid.