Home again -- and I fired up the oven and when it was the hottest -- I cooked a couple of pizzas. Jeffrey gave us a great pizza dough recipe and shared secrets on flipping the dough. I can now say that I can twirl pizza dough in the air (and catch it).
Firing up the oven |
Coals spread - oven is ready to go
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Great pizza! A little carbon is good. |
Inspired by the baking class, I prepared a loaf of country white for my first bake. At the end of the bread class, Jeffrey gave each of us a starter from his 15 year old chef and I nurtured it to create enough for my bread. Pizzas and bread have different temperature requirements -- pizza cooks when the oven is the hottest and bread cooks from retained heat at a cooler temperature. On each firing, you have to heat the oven to the hottest to drive heat into the oven structure. You have to monitor the oven as it cools from 700-800 degrees to 500 or so degrees. I ignored what I knew and put the loaf in when the oven was around 600-650 degrees -- resulting in a totally charred loaf. Life's lesson -- be patient!
Yesterday was a beautiful day in Saratoga and I fired the oven for a pure bread bake. I made 2 loaves each of country white and miche pointe a calliere (whole wheat). I timed the firing process and my oven fired up to 800 degrees in 45 minutes -- with using the equivalent of 2 split pieces of wood and a generous amount of wood scraps. The temperature dropped gradually and I loaded the oven with the 4 loaves of bread when it was around 575 degrees. I steamed the oven before and after loading it which gave the finished loaves a nice crust. My take on the final output is that the loaves burned slightly and I should have let the oven cool a little more before baking. The white loaves were slightly undercooked (by about 5 minutes baking time) but they are still quite good!
Loaves prior to baking |
Miche pointe a calliere loaves |
Country white loaves
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