There's something about wood fired ovens that I just love. Maybe it's that bread and pizza taste so much better with that hint of smoke. Or maybe it's just that I like playing with fire.
Whatever it is I woke up this morning and had the urge to bake some bread. In the winter that wouldn't be a problem, fire up the oven and add some heat to the house in the process. But in the summer to have oven braked bread, you either need some really awesome air conditioning, not care about the heat, or have some type of outdoor oven. This could be a solar oven, I've tried cookies and brownies from solar ovens and they are delicious, or a wood fired cob or earth oven.
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| Clean oven! |
My dad and I built our earth oven when I was in grade school and we made bread, pizzas, cookies and bread sticks over the years. We took a while to figure out how to make something and have it come out just right instead of beautiful on the outside and raw on the inside or charcoal on the outside and wonderful on the inside. But we didn't use the oven last year. Or the year before even though we kept saying we need to bake some bread. So it just sat there for a couple years and besides being a great conversation piece, it didn't get used.
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| The craziness of trying to get my dough made. |
I've just changed that. I'm sitting here smelling the bread, that usually means it is about done. But what I did this morning was make my dough, which was an adventure in itself since I didn't have perfect ingredients. The yeast was two years past its "best by" date, the honey was crystallized, I wasn't sure I had enough molasses and I just barely had enough wheat flour. So first I measured my wheat flour, that wasn't a big deal I could have finished the difference with white flour, then I had to heat up the honey to get it liquid again, hope the yeast was active enough to make the bread rise and cross my fingers.
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| My loaves ready to go in the oven. |
The dough was made and rising, not much, not as much as the recipe said to let it go, but I figured I wasn't going to get it to double in size anyway. While it was rising I started prep on the oven. The detritus from sitting for a couple years had to be swept from the brick, the door had to be soaked, which meant I had to find a container large enough that I could reach, the one we normally use was high up behind my kayak which is hanging over my shelves of pottery. I wasn't going to get that by myself. Luckily last year I had emptied a storage tote and that turned out to be big enough. I hooked up the hose and turned on the water and soaked down the area around the oven. I did this again once I had the fire going.
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| The door and extra slab of wood soaking. The bucket of rocks to keep the door submerged. |
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Fire lit, you start with the fire close to the door so it can get enough oxygen to burn.
After that it gets pushed farther in to allow as much heat as possible to stay in the oven. |
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Cleaning out the coals. We use old fireplace tools. When we do a pizza, the brick
gets swabbed with a wet cloth because the pizza goes right on the brick and the
crunch of coals is not pleasant. |
And then I had to go back to the dough which got divided into four loaves and set to rise for another hour. During that hour I went out to start the fire. Now if we had plans to bake more than a few loaves of bread I would have started the oven earlier. Or my dad would have while I got the bread ready. We usually let it heat up for 3-4 hours to fully heat the oven and the brick floor. I didn't need it that hot so an hour was enough. The coals and any remaining wood gets shoveled out into our fire pit, we also usually plan to have a campfire when we use the oven. It becomes the evening entertainment.
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The bread mid-baking. I removed the slab of wood when I realized it was cedar.
I didn't want the bread to taste like that. Might have to find a good piece of birch for this. |
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| Closed up with our modified door. Have to keep the heat in. |
The bread got lined up around the edge of the oven and I placed a piece of wood I had soaking with the door on the brick inside to add more moisture to the oven. That is normally why the door, made of wood, gets soaked, but we had to cover our door in metal after almost setting it on fire one time. The bread bakes for about 30 minutes and when it is almost ready you can smell it. If you start smelling it after only 5 or 10 minutes, your oven is too hot and the bread will either be dough inside or charred outside. Unless you have a heat gun or similar oven thermometer, you have to guess how hot the oven is. We usually hope it is right and just go for it. If it is too cold, it will take a little longer, but you will get edible food. I managed to get it just right and my bread came out after 30 minutes.
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Finished loaves. I always tap the loaves, if it has a muffled sound, most likely they are still raw.
I also flip one out of the pan to check the bottom. |
I hauled my bread back to the still cool house. I smell like campfire and my knuckles are black from soot, but the bread came out great and it was lovely sitting out by the oven enjoying the nice weather. If we would want to make something else today it wouldn't take very long to get the oven hot again and when we do a full firing the oven stays warm to the touch for days. The walls are about 6-8 inches thick and hold heat really well. We could fire it up a couple days later and have it ready to go in an hour or two.
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| Of course I have to test a slice (or two) to make sure it is done and tastes good. |
We'll have to get more flour and yeast before we can make anything else. I'd like to make something every week this summer if I can manage it. I was going to make some other things today if I had enough yeast. I've been craving a big soft pretzel, bet that would be excellent in the earth oven!
