Latest firing technique.

I talked to Ron Parks today, a patient of mine and a historian by profession. He said his son-in-law has build an outdoor oven and had questions about what kind of wood I use and a few other questions. After a year of working with the oven, getting the oven hot is the easy part. I find the timing of attaining the proper over temperature the toughest to do.

Here's the latest sequence of firing up the oven:
1. 4 PM start the fire in the oven. I use mostly hedge (Osage Orange). I load up almost the entire oven with a layer of wood, but I stack it with small sticks near the door to start the fire.
2. Once the fire starts and a few coals have formed, I push some of the coals back into the oven and load some more wood into the oven. I'll do this every 30-60 minutes, sometimes adding wood, sometimes just moving coals around. The idea is to get some coals to all corners of the oven. It takes around 4-8 hours to accomplish this. You know you are getting the oven hot when the soot burns off the walls of the oven and there are no more black splotches on the side. If one area is still black, scoot some coals into that area.
3. I usually try to put some big diameter pieces of wood (6-8") in late at night so I won't have to get up frequently at night to load up the oven. Even then I have to get up twice during the night, usually 0230 and 0500.
4. I try to get the dome temperature as close to 500 degrees as I can. If it is the morning of baking day and it's only up to 450, I settle for that. I then close the door of then oven, letting the remaining coals burn out. To get the dome to 500, the hearth is usually up to 900, which is way too hot to use. It takes about 6-8 hours for the oven to cool down. To bake bread, the hearth temperature needs to be below 500 degrees. (525 is OK if using bread without oils).
5. By late afternoon, I'm usually ready to bake. Most loaves finish in about 25-35 minutes.

Why a brick oven?

I probably should have posted this first, but blogging is new to me so I'm getting stuff all out of order. I do a lot of baking. My recent quest was to create "the perfect sourdough bread" at home. It's a bit of a hassle making sourdough. You have to feed the starter, which is essentially getting a bunch of happy bacteria growing in a water and flour mixture. The bacteria burp and create gas, lactic acid for sourness and water. It takes them about 3 days of steady meals of flour and water before they wake up to make enough gas to make bread rise. It's taken me about a year to figure this out. I guess I'm a slow learner. but I digress. Once you get the starter fired up, then you have to mix the dough, figure out how long to knead it, how long to let it rest and raise. I've read a few books on it. Those books could compete with my college chemistry texts in complexity.

Anyway, why the oven? Dicky V would say, "it's all about the crust babeeeee!" My quest for the perfect sourdough led Jeanette (my luscious wife) to ask a cook at HuHot in Manhattan "how do you make a bread bowl with the nice crust?" The guy said, "well, you have to have a brick oven and you have to know your oven."

Jeanette returned home and told me about this. My question was then, what the heck is a brick oven and why is it so important? I Googled "brick oven". There were actually websites of guys that have built these things at home. One had a couple hundred pictures, almost a step by step guide to how he did it. It was also a bit intimidatinb, as the pictures seemed to take place over at least 5 changes of season. In the book "The Bread Builders" by Alan Scott and Daniel Wing building an oven is described. I was hooked. The whole process had a technical aspect to it, as well as a traditional, historical aspect. I emailed my friend the chef and he said he'd help. Neither of us knew a thing about laying brick. Before I knew it, a slab was poured and I was recruiting more neighbors to lay blocks and brick.

I like to build stuff. Normally, I can do most things by myself. Not so with this project. Anything done in this project required at least three people. First, there is laying, leveling and lining up 40 pound blocks. After that, cutting 3/4" rebar. Then, with some carefully placed plywood and forms, an 8 inch thick oven base ("hearth") is poured and suspended by the rebar. The hearth is a 1000 pound slab of Fondu concrete suspended by 10 rebar. There is a 1" space around the hearth to allow for expansion of the slab. Without this space, the hearth would expand and crack the base.

After the oven floor was built, the walls of the oven were placed, using the high duty firebrick. After that, it was the arches. . .each arch consisted of 19 bricks laid on edge on a form, with the last one being tapped and wedged into place. Arches create a tremendous amount of outward force, so before they could be laid up, the walls had to be reinforced with about 6 inches of reinforced concrete. I lost sleep thinking about and working on the arches. They didn't turn out perfect, but I'm pretty sure they aren't going anywhere, now that they are encased in another 5 inches of reinforced concrete.

Things I learned about concrete in this project: drier is better than wet, cement mixers are wonderful things, I can only lift a half-full 5 gallon bucket of concrete. The building process was great fun, a time I'll always look back on with great memories.

I'd like to thank my "building staff" that were such great help. Jeanette for helping out when I couldn't talk anybody else into helping, Rick Paul for all his assistance all along the way (ask him about his "pulled butt muscles"). Tim Acosta for his young back and his muscles to do all the stuff I was too wimpy to do. Chuck Goeckel for his quality eye in helping finish the casing for the top part of the oven. . .and it was really cold that day too. Also Ben, Sarah, Alex and Kathleen pitched in at times.

Brick oven practice.

March 15, 2009

Started burning yesterday at 1500, got temperature to 550 bottom, 350 top at 0830 this morning.

Started bread at 0815, finishing dough for 12 loaves at 0915.

Starters have been fed for at least 36 hours. Sourdough (King Arthur) and LA4 starters are used.

Recipe for 2 loaves:

13 oz water

26 oz flour (3 scoops AP, 1 scoop bread flour)

2 tsp kosher salt

1 cup starter

Mixed for 2 minutes, let rest, mixed for 4 minutes. Dough was a tiny bit wet, especially when folding. Doubling time today took about 6 hours. (Temperature outside about 65)

Oven was heated to 831/700 on the bottom and 650/450 on the top. Coals were raked toward the front, door placed in draft position for about 90 minutes, then the coals raked out and the door closed.

Temperature dropped quickly from the hearth down to 650/620, but the dome dropped only to 550/426 in the same amount of time. The dome temperature did not rise once the coals were removed, tho. After another hour, the deep hearth temperature was equal to or slightly higher than the floor temperature. Baking was done at around 650 H, 550 D. Flour test took 9 seconds before it turned brown.

A ramekin full of water was placed in the corner of the oven. 8 loaves were baked first, removed after 20-25 minutes. The bottoms were dark, but the bottom edges were pale, top was brown gray. These probably could have stayed in another 5-10 minutes. Next load included two French rolls on the perforated pan and two more LA4 baguettes on a cookie sheet. These baked for about 25 minutes, could have stayed in another 5 for a crunchier crust.

Comments: to get the dome to proper cooking temperature, I'll need to push the temperature of the dome to at least 700 degrees. The hearth will undoubtedly be hotter, but it drops temperature more quickly than the dome, so the oven should be ready in 2-3 hours after coals removed. Probably max load with a good oven door will be 12 baguettes. I thought the sourdough could have used a bit more time as the crust was a bit weak and the texture a bit too wet. The LA4 was a big hit with Rick.

JEH

March 22, 2009

Only got the oven up to 831/660 and 540/440 on the top. Didn't stoke the fire during the night. It was really windy today, and I had to put up a board to reduce the draft. I need to get a note pad up to take temperature measurements.

I baked at around 600 bottom, 500 top, but the dome temperature continued to drop quite a bit.

I used the pump sprayer today, about a 4 second blast before closing the door.

Baking time was about 30 minutes.

I used the wheat grinder today. Despite the iffy oven conditions, bread turned out ok.

Joel

April 11-12, 2009

Started the oven Friday afternoon, (I was off) and kept it going all night long. The dome got to 650 with 580 in the cladding. I need to work on my timing. Ideally, at baking time the dome should be around 575 and the bottom 600 or so. It takes about an hour to drop about 50 degrees, so the oven needs to be swept out before the bread is shaped into loaves.

No change in the bread recipe. Now using Bosch Universal Plus mixer that works really well.

I baked the bread at 600 degrees, it was done in in 25 minutes, but pretty dark.

Any bread with sugar or honey added probably needs to be cooked on a rack, with the oven around 500 degrees or lower.

I'm still fighting with the design of the oven door. I'll probably need to resort to the steel door. I just have to get it to fit.