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.