Too Hot for Fire!

It's bee quite a while since I posted on here.  That doesn't mean that I haven't been cooking with fire, I have but just haven't either deemed it worthy enough to post about or it was simply a repeat of previous successes.  I mean, how often can I post pictures of bread coming out of the oven?

When we designed the outdoor kitchen we decided to include a back wall of open work bricks.  The idea being to allow heat to escape.  During the summer we experience temperatures up around the 40C mark on a regular basis and on these days cooking in the house becomes problematic (i.e. it raises the temperature in the house to unbearable levels) and it should in theory be more comfortable to cook outside. Here you can see the open work bricks let the beetles in too!

This has only been partially successful.  The bread oven is simply too hot in summer.  Open work bricks or not I am now not baking bread at all.  This is a bit sad because I do prefer my own home baked bread but I find that not only is it too hot, working in front of a raging hot oven is not something I can cope with at the moment, but also it is sooo hot I have very little inclination to do much beyond some very basic cooking.

Fortunately the BBQ really comes into its own now.  Simple grilled meats and veggies from the garden accompanied by a salad make for the best of summer lunches.  Here the sweet corn are steaming inside their own natural covering (the outer leaves) only seconds from being harvested in the garden.  Pork chops sprinkled with a little salt and paprika will be teemed up with a warm lentil and pea salad (sage, oregano and spiced vinegar give it a summery lift).

The spiced vinegar is left over from making pickled cucumbers and will be fine used in salads.  The little pot is full of butter, a little smoked salt and some cumin, this will be mashed together and then smeared on our warm corn on the cob.  What could be simpler?

No not a Molotov cocktail that's the vinegar bottle that doesn't have a cork!

Yum!

It's Been A While

...Since I lit the oven.  I have made bread in the meantime but I mostly cooked it indoors in the electric oven.  Yes, quicker, easier, less worry... but then I pulled my socks up and said get a grip girl.

Today I made two baguettes and two plain white loaves.  In the bread oven.

There is always that little moment of anxiousness about the fire but this time I was a lot more relaxed about it.

I set it going, then added a few more logs, then simply left it alone to its own devices.
Two hours and the fire burned down and the dome was white and I closed the door to put the fire out. I removed most of the embers but didn't want to lose too much heat from the oven so left a very very few at the back and sides.

Bread went in.  Door shut.  Timer set.  Meanwhile I started a lentil stew on the parrafin burner outside.  Now I don't know if anyone has one of these?

But if so I would love the proper working instructions.  It smoked dreadfully.  And if I turned it down it cooked too slowly.  Then it started spluttering and whooshing flames quite high.  So I put it out and used the little camping gas cooker instead.

You can see here how very black it has made the outside of my pot.  Not happy with that.  Anyway, it just goes to show that you don't need fancy equipment to cook alfresco.  The camping gas cooker was great for a one pot meal.  After the bread came out of the oven I put a tray of flapjacks in and also the lentil stew pot.

The bread looks a little dark but it was actually really well cooked... a lovely crispy crust and perfectly cooked inside.  The oven was definitely hot enough to do more but I didn't have anything else prepared.

All in all well Woman is well chuffed and Man is full!

Right Lets Get it all Co-ordinated!

Today was a bread baking day and I was determined to get the oven and the sourdough ready at the same time....

It started well.  The sourdough was doing its thing since yesterday morning and I decided to spice things up a bit by adding some seeds and sultanas to the dough - no recipe... hey lets just live dangerously!

I soaked the seeds first because I read recently that it makes them more digestible and I have issues with digestion.  But then they were very wet.  I can't add them to the dough that wet.  So I had to try and dry them off with tea towels.  It was kind of successful.

I added them to the dough after the first two rises and then put them into the baskets to prove.

I made a bog standard plain loaf at the same time - yeah I felt bad about abandoning the bakers in the village, I mean they give me the yeast for free these days because I buy the flour from them... and we chat... and I meant to bring up the subject of the sourdough to kind of ease them into the idea that I might not be coming for yeast any more... oh and of course eventually I might not be coming for flour either....

Anyway, I had hoped to do some sewing today but realistically bread baking is a whole day affair when you use the oven.  The fire took really well and the oven heated really quickly... just as well since the bread dough had been ready for a while.

So nice to have a warm day when I can leave the bread to prove outside

OK.  So I should have taken the embers out, but the last time I did that, the oven cooled really quickly.  But the ambient temperature was about 19C today and I think that made a difference... the oven was too hot for the bread.  I left it as long as I dared to cool but then just had to put the bread in.

Don't know why I look at it... it lies!

Yup.  It was too hot.

The white loaf is recoverable... not sure about the sourdough.  Haven't cut it yet.  Actually I am totally cheesed off!  I don't seem to be learning much at all when it comes to the oven.  Every time I use it, its different and what I know doesn't seem to apply... so it's like the first time every time.  Sigh.

Woman says Never Give Up, Never Surrender.  Man says... it might be ok if we cut the crust off.

In search of the Perfect Crust!

Before investing in the bread oven I read a lot of books about clay ovens and related stuff.  I also spent a lot of time on the internet watching youtube videos of people using their ovens.  The arrival and subsequent firing of my own oven was filled with trepidation.  A lot of it was to do with the fact that the builder dropped it and I still wonder if I am yet to reap a nasty surprise because of that, but putting those thoughts aside, I had felt fairly confident that I would suss out how it all worked and start making great artisanal bread very soon.

I have been a bit disappointed with my results so far.  Yes all of my baking efforts have been edible, but it's quite a stretch from edible to the 'amazing' results I was expecting.  Apart from the first firing when I actually burned parts of the loaves I have never achieved that crunchy chewy sweet crust that you would expect from an artisanal loaf.  In fact the loaves appear to be getting more and more bland, each time I use it.

Now it could be that I have been concentrating on getting the fire right - and I am almost there with that one - and so have let the ball drop on the bread front.  With that in mind, and I am sure that it has been in the back of my mind for some time, I have begun a sourdough starter.

I used to make regular sourdough bread in the UK and I brought my starter (which we named Fred and kept in the fridge) with me to Spain but with all the stress of the move and finding and buying the finca I allowed it to die.  That's a shame but not a catastrophe as it's really easy to grow a new one. There are numerous recipes online and in just about every artisanal bread book you can buy so I won't give my recipe here.

At the moment it's a very immature 'Fred' but will be ready for making great sourdough bread in about another week or maybe two.

The other thing I did was to revisit my bread books and my bread oven books.  It all makes so much more sense now that I actually have an oven and have been practicing with it.  And the first big discovery I had was that my oven is not actually a bread oven.

It is a pizza oven and there is a bit of a difference.  I can still bake bread in it but knowing that it is actually designed to make pizza rather than bread will help me understand how to use it better.  And you know, I still haven't made pizza in it!


The dome of a bread oven holds the heat for a very long time which enables you to faff around with the door open for a while and possibly bake several batches of bread in a row.  The pizza oven is designed to be used with the fire still in it, albeit pushed to the back or the side, the dome is then constantly being 'fed' heat from the small fire still burning which cooks the top of your pizza.  It does retain heat but it doesn't keep the fierce heat that bread needs for very long.


So.  How do I go about making bread in it?  Well I have to plan to fill the oven as much as possible in one go, because one batch of bread is likely all I will get, unless I rekindle the fire and start the process all over again for a second batch.  I should not bother with trying to wash the oven floor as I am simply losing heat that is not being replenished.  Yes I could remove the embers but it might be better to let them burn down to ash with the door closed and then simply sweep them to the edges of the oven.  If I am concerned about ash on the base of my free form loaves then I could empty the embers and then blow any remaining ash up the chimney with a quick blast from the bellows - I am inclined not to bother though since I am going to lose more heat by keeping the door open for such a long time.

There are numerous other little things that now make sense, that I wasn't doing before, for example, free form loaves need to be cooked first as the tin loaves can cope with a longer slower bake.  baguettes should be done even before that, when the oven is really too hot for other bread, especially since I cook mine on special baguette trays which keep them off the direct heat of the oven floor.  I need to leave the door closed rather than keep opening it to check on the loaves - be brave Jane!

But most of all I think concentrating on improving my basic dough will go a long way to achieving my goal of the Perfect Crust.  And towards that end I have resorted to buying flour online.  I normally buy my flour from the local bakers along with fresh yeast.  Well, the baker stocks only one kind of flour - white.  The bakers is very traditional and they don't do different types of bread as you would expect from a small bakers in the UK.  If I stop buying the flour (and the yeast since I now have Fred) I no longer have any need to return to the bakers.  But I think I do need to stop buying the flour.

When I say the flour is white, I really mean it.  I am pretty sure that it is bleached and it is definitely bland and probably not especially good for you.  So why did I continue to buy it?  Well you can't get much else around here.  They have a whole wheat flour in the supermarket in a nearby town but it is also quite 'white' compared to what I was used to getting in England.  Almost like everything has been really cleaned and then put back in together.  You can buy special flour for Tempura batter and you can buy flour for cake (self raising) but they rarely have any speciality flours.  I did find a spelt flour in Carrefour but that's a long drive from here.  And since the bread is only going to be as good as the ingredients I decided I needed to up my game.  So.  I found this place  http://www.elamasadero.com/en/29-flour .  And they will send me the flour within a couple of days apparently.  The perfect crust is coming.  I can feel it!  Man eats pretty much anything but he likes that Woman has started a new 'Fred'.

What I did right... What I did wrong!

No two fires are the same.  This I am finding out.  I am trying to learn from my mistakes but it seems that each time I use the oven I correct a previous fault but find another completely new one!

Today, Cave woman built the fire up nice and hot using all the wood in one go.  It worked.  The dome turned white after only about an hour.  Hooray.  Cave Woman did notice that the cracks in the exterior of the oven appeared worse when the oven was hot.

This is worrying but after a little research on the internet apparently this is normal, it can happen and many people judge the temperature of the oven by the width of the cracks as the dome heats up.

 I find this scary.  But after close investigation Man just shrugged and walked away.

The dough for bread was already rising.

Learning from previous errors Cave Woman left the glowing embers in the oven right up until the moment the bread dough was ready to be baked.

To utilise the fierce heat from the embers I baked (roasted? Smoked?) a couple of aubergines until the skin turned very very burned, and the inside was as soft as butter.

The aubergines were then left to cool in a colander before skinning and squeezing gently to remove excess moisture.

When quite cool they were whizzed up in the food processor with some olive oil, garlic, yoghurt, cider vinegar/lemon juice, salt and pepper.  This is the starter for our lunch.  And will do for snacks later.

I should really have made flat breads to go with the aubergines but I didn't remember the aubergines until after all the bread dough had been made and instead we have Bridge Rolls.

Well.  The first mistake was that I didn't wash the oven floor - because the last time I did that the oven cooled far too quickly.  But this time I did remember to close off the chimney after the embers were removed... but ... I forgot that the bridge rolls are made with egg and milk and the sugars in these are inclined to burn.

The bottoms of the rolls are a bit burned, and the top is very brown but the insides were definitely not cooked.  So Cave Woman used a cake cooling rack on the base of the oven to lift the bread up a bit and hopefully stop it burning further.  The rolls were replaced and continued to cook without browning any more.  Bread can be very forgiving.  They turned out perfectly edible, including the burned bottoms.

The newest bit of kit acquired for use with the oven is the pair of welders leather gloves.  They are a little large for Cave Woman's delicate hands but definitely do the trick.

The rest of the bread cooked in the normal 30 minutes or thereabouts time even though the thermometer on the door didn't rise above 100C.

The thermometer lies.  It never shows the correct temperature in the oven and I am learning to trust my bare hands.  A quick wave about inside the oven and I am getting to know whether it is too hot, not hot enough etc...  A laser thermometer is on the next christmas list.  The loaf from the tin had browned nicely on top but the free form loaves did not.  The reason for this is a bit of a mystery.  The dough is the same, however the free form loaves went in after the tin loaf was already half cooked... could the oven have cooled that much in that short a time?  Cheese biscuits made with herbs and sun dried tomatoes went in next.

I put the hot embers on the bbq and once again we used them to cook lunch.  A couple of pork steaks sprinkled with paprika and a pot of lentils.  The aubergine and rolls were eaten as a starter.

Finally, as usual, a pot of soup is placed in the closed oven and left for several hours, it will do lunch for tomorrow along with the last of the rolls.

I have discovered that no matter how organised I get there is a point where cooking with fire becomes frantic.  Once you start loading up the oven you are constantly checking to make sure things don't burn.  If you have meat on the BBQ at the same time it is impossible to leave either to go set the table or prepare a salad... needs must share the joy of cooking with Man.  Who to his credit had barely set foot into the outdoor kitchen from the moment I claimed it as my territory, but now is happily poking and prodding and turning the meat as it sizzles.  Ah, its the little things!

Cave Woman tired.  Man happy happy happy.