wood-fired oven

This is a sourdough loaf made from my own starter which takes about a week to make. The perfect loaf was kneaded and left to rise multiple times before it went in our brand new wood-fired oven. The bread-baking smell never happened. The next to meet an even worse fate was a pizza that literally went up in flames. Note the conflagration. Too much flame maybe?

OK, this was a bad idea but very hard to return. It weighs a lot. We (well the Handyman) put it in place with a forklift.

A phone call to the guy we bought it from went something like this:

Me:”I put in my bread and within minutes had so much black smoke coming out of the chimney that it was like we were at the Vatican choosing a new Pope.”

Helpful Creative Millwork guy: “Mmmm, yes that’s a big problem. You can’t follow the temperatures in your recipes. You need to learn how your particular oven works. Here are the temperatures you need to cook things at….”

Getting pretty good. Thanksgiving dinner, no problem.

Now the only downside to our Mediterranean oven imported from Portugal is best expressed by Dan Wing in the preface to Richard Miscovich’s book From the Wood-Fired Oven, “You make delicious stuff to eat, people try it, people get used to eating it, people come to expect it, and pretty soon there are people checking surreptitiously to find out when you will be, or if you are now, or if you just have been baking something great in your oven. The only practical solutions are to make them bring the beer or wine…”