Wood fired Roasted Potato Bread

The first one is a little toasty , the Boule came out perfect.  I cooked these after pizza in a very hot oven ~ 650 dome and ~ 550 degree floor. So it is possible - mostly I was to impatient to wait another 1-2 hours for the temp to go down , and, my bread was ready to go!  So what to do?  My tip - put a diffuser on the floor of the oven - to absorb some of the heat, and cover the bread with anything that will fit - just the way you use a dutch-oven pot in a regular oven.  In my house I preheat the dutch oven or pot cover - but in the pizza oven i don't because its so fricken hot . Leave the cover on for the first 20 min or so. This way of course you don't have to deal with trying to add steam, you get plenty from the dough.

Also I know most recommendations say to sweep out the oven floor before baking - but  I don't feel like clearing out a bunch of hot coals and worrying about dropping one on my foot ! . I just diffuse the coals by spreading them around the perimeter of the oven. Also, this way you really don't have to rotate your bread.  

The recipe comes from Jeffy Hamelmans " Bread" book Roasted Potato . But I substituted Spelt Flour for the WW, and I used my SD starter for the preferment which I changed from its usual 100% to 65% stiff preferment using my starter changer spreadsheet.

Saturday night Pizzas , Prosciutto with 70% hydrated AP flour and one of my favorites;  Caramelized onion and fennel with 60% hydration Caputo flour.

I tried this experiment twice now and surprisingly , people preferred the extra chewiness of the AP flour compared to the Caputo Flour.  Next time I think I will try a  50:50 mix  - that might provide the best of both. I also added a little Olive oil to both batches this time , and noticed very little difference in cooking or taste, so might as well leave it out.

Tale of Two Flours for Wood fired Pizza

Caputo 00 vs Morebread for Pizza

Both Pizza were cooked in a ~ 700f deg oven and cooked in 2-3 min

Caputo 00 Results

More extensibility - soft lighter crust - more puff . pairs well with lighter toppings

MoreBread AP Results

Still performed well but with a definite "chew" to it that Caputo did not have.  I could see making a larger pizza with this, more NY style . Could support heavier toppings. 

Weber cast iron grate holder for pizza oven

One side of my old weber cast iron grill grate was a perfect size for my pizza oven.  I had enough scrap metal to fabricate a little frame to hold the grill grate. It had to be the right height so I would have room to pull it out to check food on it. I put little sliding feet on the legs so that when it is slid across the oven floor it would not gouge or scratch the floor, I can't help it , it's just a holder for the grill grate so it you want to use the grill grate with your weber you still can.  I am always coming up with some feature to modify or customize , maybe someday I will make some money with one of my creations:)

Grilled Pineapple with cinnamon after Pizza

Pizza Oven Baked Bread

This is the first Bread I baked in my Pizza Oven.
It is made with sprouted Faro wheat, and a mixture of AP and Spelt flour.
I put in in and covered it with a pot for 20 min then removed the cover for the last 20-25 min.
the floor temps were about 425 F and the dome about 500 F

 

*Moroccan Spiced Grilled Chicken pizza with...

Moroccan Spiced Grilled Chicken pizza with Pablano pepper and BBQ sauce.  I grilled the chicken the day before ( also in the Pizza oven) . This is made with OO flour 650-700 deg.  8 photos in this album View or comment on Kevin J.'s album »

 Onion and brown rice ala Peter Reinhart

Pretty much Peters recipe. I did not have buttermilk, so did the milk+ vinegar trickThis is one of my favorites breads.  Sweet and  great for sandwiches or with cheese. Its very wet and sticky, Not sure but I think there is an error in the recipe because it calls for 2TBS yeast  with an overnight fermentation !!  No way this would work. I cut the yeast in half which is still alot , but its heavy with the rice and onion. I bake it in one day because it doubles in the fridge in a few hours !

Zio Ciro Pizza oven

I recently upgraded from my "home-made" smoker retro fit pizza oven to a "real"  pizza oven  .  I did a lot of research on many companies for modular vs pre-assembled, vs cobb style make from scratch.  I decided because of my small urban space I needed a pre-assembled oven. Most were so heavy , there would be no way I could get one into my back yard. My existing oven is about 20" square, and many of the lighter ones were only about 23 in diameter, the next size up were ovens about 28 inch diameter.  I found a oven made in Italy by Ziro Ciro,  and imported by  Los Angeles Oven works .  This new oven was not only a little larger,  at 31 inch diameter - (I think the largest preassembled oven available) , but is also a manageable 400 lbs - ( moveable with four guys)  .  I chronicled the delivery and install in an earlier post and what I had to do to beef up my deck.   I did three days of progressive Curing fires, and then fired it up about 5 times so far, cooking Pizza of course, but also roasting chicken, mixed vegies, and baking a bread pudding.  There is a learning curve to the fire management which I am just getting on top of.  Tonight I will be doing pizza's for seven people , so my first real test of assembly line pizzas.

Onion and Fennel Pie in a wood fired oven

Ziro Ciro italian oven in seattle

Check This out - I'm going !

The Grain Gathering

#Spelt & rye  #SourDough

If you want to add some great whole grain flour but WW is a bit much for you , try Spelt. It has a great nutty taste but not overpowering like Whole Wheat can be.  I always try to add a little Rye too - my wild yeast likes it -  maybe they think it is chocolate?

This is 75% hydration , overnight fermented. with 25% of the total dough from sourdough starter .

I 

Pizza Oven set up

Oven made in Italy ( Zio ciro ) and imported by los Angeles oven works (LAOW)  Peter and Anna at LAOW were great . I will report on its function later . This post is just to share the process of getting it set up on a deck. I previously build a BBQ cover that I wanted to place the pizza oven under.

The Shipping was pretty Fast ( 1 week)  but First  I had some prep work to do:

My old oven was down around the corner from my deck,  but I wanted this to be on the deck closer to the kitchen. To center the oven under my covered area and I needed to add extra support to my deck and extend the deck out a bit to accommodate the size of the oven. I made the extension super heavy duty with  6 dovetailed 4X4 supports.

The Final product

Mocking up the Space

Adding Extra Support

I needed to add about 2 feet extension

DoveTail the 4X4 posts for stronger support of 2x4's

The Oven Arrives

Moved to my Garage

Revised excel sheets for hydration based bread creations

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oc2iq3SFc1r_AKZBfpxoReQn73IWx41o56slU_94BNA/edit?usp=docslist_api

Bakers % worksheets.

Here is the link for my excel sheets I use to create most of my breads. There are two worksheets. The second one is to convert 100% poolish / starters to other  stiffer starters, such as when you need a biga but want to use your starter.