Bill from California USA (ongoing)

[wjw]

Can't hardly wait for that first pizza.

Bill

[wjw]

Well...it was definitely bigger than it should have been... but since the vault roof was completed months ago, and since we've had nothing but nice hot weather over the past few months....and since there is no cladding around the oven to hold moisture....I'm hopeful the too big fire is no big deal. When the oven was hot there was one crack that appeared in the vault roof/arch that followed along a couple of joints near the back wall.

Getting ready to light her up. Probably should have passed on the margarita....for sure I should have passed on the second one ;-)






The crack.


The chimney worked like a champ. No smoke at all on the front.


The oven got hot enough for the roof to actually start clearing of soot in a couple of small areas.

I cooled things down when that happened by moving the fire forward and spreading it out. Other than the one crack, everything seemed fine. No steam, no scary popping noises, etc.

I think (hope) a few cracks are unavoidable and the one I ended up with won't be a big deal.??

Anyone think I should put a thin layer of cladding and chicken-wire mesh on tthat roof arch to hold things together or do you think that one crack of that type is not a big deal?

Bill

[turkey]

the crack is in the horizontal plane so gravity will keep it compressed and it won't affect the structural nature of the oven.

looking very good if that was your first full fire. I would have a few more settling fires before making any additions with regard to cladding and such.

[wjw]

Finally did a full blown pizza party last night. Did approximately twenty-five (or more) pizzas and a great time was had.

The back story is that I had my first fire in my oven five days ago. I went way overboard and made the fire much bigger than I should have for a first fire. The roof actually got hot enough to partially clear of soot during the first fire.

But I figured that since I did that and the oven didn't blow up in a cloud of steam, I might as well push on. So I had another relatively hot fire on day two, and then on day three did the first pizza cook with the kids. The floor temp was 795 F (423C), and the roof was 1012 F (544C). The oven has remained at temps no lower than three hundred degrees for the past five days.

It has no cladding anywhere but is insulated to the hilt and stays hot for a relatively long time. The morning after the first pizza cook the thermocouple located between the brick floor and insulation was registering at 620 degrees (326C).

Yesterday morning (thirty-six hours after the fire was out) it was still over three hundred degrees F (150C). Suffice it to say that I am impressed with the way these masonry ovens stay hot.

So we had the first big pizza party scheduled for last night...but my oven was still hot from two days ago, and I was anxious to cook some bread. To of the resident sourdough experts from the FB site were kind enough to both help me with making my own starter and sharing recipes, tips, and techniques for doing my first batch of sourdough. Yesterday around noon I lit a fire to bring the temp from 300F (150C) up to a proper bread baking temp of 550F (290C).


So after about a one hour burn, I raked the fire/coals out of the oven, cleaned up, wet mopped it out, left the door open for about forty minutes to bring the oven down from a tad over six hundred to around 550 (290C), and put six loaves in. Those turned out great and the next five loaves went in right after. I put a dutch oven full of ice in with the bread, I don't think I needed that much ice because it hadn't evaporated away by the end of the first batch. The first batch took right at thirty minutes. The oven temp was around 530 (276) when I pulled out the first batch. The second batch took about the same amount of time.

We had our first big pizza party scheduled for last night as well and guests started arriving as I was pulling the second batch of bread out. I immediately started another fire to bring it back up to pizza temps. The thermocouple between the brick and insulation was five fifty or so when i started that second fire. The roof was clearing in under an hour and the deep thermocouples were back well over six hundred within a few minutes after that. The IR gun was reading 800 on the floor. It equallized as I was cleaning up and pushing coals to the side and we then proceeded to cook approximately twenty five pizzas over the next hour. We frequently had three going at a time and they were cooking very quickly. (Two minutes or less depending on how many toppings people were putting o them.)

no pizza pics...I was a little busy cooking for twenty-five...


Bottom line is that the oven works great but I wouldn't recommend my curring plan.

Here are the pics


(My brother and his wife insisted that I wear the apron they bought me for the occasion. I drew tthe line at the matching chef's hat.)




I did eleven loaves but between the time people started arriving for the party and when the pizzas startted getting cooked, four loaves got chopped up and dipped in olive oil and balsamic.

[cannyfradock]

Congratulations Bill !!!

It's always great to hear/see people reaping the rewards of all their hard work.

Nearly everyone loves pizza's, but there's something special about a loaf that's been baked in a Wood-fired oven....your's look great.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

If you take any more pics.....please....bring em on.

Terry

[tonyb]

Well done Bill, it all looks fantastic.

Did you use the sourdough starter for making the pizza bases? I can thoroughly recommend trying that, it lifts the taste of the pizza to a new level.

[wjw]

No I didn't use the sour dough starter for pizza dough. I will next time though. A friend of ours has a WFO and his wife offered to prepare the dough. Since I was going to be busy with the bread and making toppings I took her up on her offer.

One thing that was neat was the day after the pizza party I went out and checked the oven temp around noon. The temp was 475F (246C). I had some left over dough and toppings from the night before so I decided to try some Calzones.

I was afraid that was too hot for Calzones and that they'd cook on the outside before being done all the way through so I left the door open while I got my ingredients together and made the calzones.

I picked a bit of fresh oregano from the garden and did two with sausage and mozzarella, one with mozzarella, prosciutto and sun-dried tomato, and one with marinated artichoke hearts and Italian salami.

By the time I had put them together the temp had dropped fifty degrees F on the hearth closest to the door. Thirty minutes later they were steaming hot and delicious. We had the in-laws coming over for a late lunch anyway to celebrate Mother's day so the calzones were a nice addition to already planned meal.

[wjw]

Working the bread angle lately...and cooking roasts and pork shoulders souther BBQ style as well.

First the bread observations...

It really is amazing how the starter matures and becomes more effective. I have had two more bake days since I last posted. As I said last time, on the first bake the sourdough didn't jump to life and spring up like some of the first yeast bread I baked last month. Since that first attempt at sourdough I have done it twice more with much more impressive results.

Now, when I do my preferment the volume triples in about four or five hours. When I mix in my flour and water the next morning and do the bulk ferment, by the time I'm ninety minutes into it and ready to do my second S&F, there are typically a couple of big silver-dollar sized bubbles on the surface of the rising mass of dough and it is geting really BIG.

Last week I tripled the recipe Jay and Faith (from the FB site) provided. The day before yesterday I quadrupled the recipie, making eight loaves which were each a bit over 1.5 pounds each before baking. (it's funny...when putting everything together it's all grams...but when it's time to fomr the loaves I switch the scale to read in pounds to double check the size. I need to get that straightened out and get things consistient.)

I upped the hydration level to about 70% on this last batch. Keeping my hands and bench knife wet for the S&F's, and moving fast when forming! The last batch was my best ever...best rise...best job I've done on the S&F...best flavor...and then I put the loaves in an oven which was too hot. I knew it was too hot, but I did it anyway. We had people coming over for dinner and I wanted fresh, hot bread to serve with dinner so I put the bread in with an oven temp of around 605. I was wet-mopping it out to try to bring the temp down, and the temp of the bricks would drop...and then the temp would jump right back up. Repeat. I was pressed for time so I put the loaves in anyway.

The bread still tasted great (best ever actually) but on three of the loaves I got great big hernia-type buldges sticking out of the the lower sides close to the hearth bricks. Kinda like a weak spot on an old fashioned tire. Didn't affect the flavor, but definitely not as pretty for those three loaves.

Anyway, very cool...lots of fun..delicious...and I'm now a hero among all my friends, neighbors, and family for passing out the cool sourdough. (Can't have the neighbors bitching about smoke...gotta keep them happy.)

The flavor of the most recent bake is sour...not super sour...but moderately so...and very delicate. As Jay said it would...getting more complex. I can't put it into words exactly how it is different...but it definitely is different...maybe softer somehow if that makes sense.


Here is a pic from the day before yesterday...




Here is a pic of last week's bake..









After the bake from the other day I did some retained heat cooking yesterday and did up an eight pound pork shoulder for pulled pork BBQ sandwiches and carmelized fifteen pounds of onions and roasted three pounds of peeled garlic cloves. Spread some of the garlic on sourdough for fantastic appetizers and threw everything else in the freezer in individual zip lock bags for future pizza bakes.

So...thanks again to Faith and Jay from FB and to all around here at the UK site for their help in all the technical support in the oven building at the aspects.

Bill

P.S.: Went to a friends house for a Memorial Day BBQ this evening and put all that left over sourdough to use. I've been cubing and freezing any bread over two days old. Today it all got transformed into Paul Prudomme's New Orleans style Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce.

[tonyb]

Hi Bill the bread looks fantastic.

[turkey]

thats a lot of bread and all looks amazing

I hear the frozen bread can be dryed to make really good bread crumbs for other dishes also. Pretty sure I saw some use for them on River Cottage (foodie program over here). Seems a good idea, less waste

[cannyfradock]

Hey Bill......great looking bread......honest. I've been trying for the last 3 years to better myself in amateur baking, but I find it a bit of a struggle........a struggle which I really enjoy. Never quite got a crumb as good as your's yet.....but I'm not giving up.

I often visit the FB forum.....mostly to see what the Brits are talking about, but in all honesty it is where I got my initial knowledge from. Only when I found that such a forum doesn't exist in the UK.....I created our own forum. The FB forum is the biggest source of info available in our field but I found it didn't address the home issue's of our needs....hence our forum.

What is the username of Jay and Faith....sorry to be nosy, but I'm really interested in any blogs of interest in dough making.......we have just stumbled across an interesting sourdough bakery in Tasmania with a "live" webcam of sourdough baking using an Allan Scott Laaaarge Vault oven...

ukwoodfiredovenforum.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=breadrecipes&action=display&thread=420

As the FB forum was MY first port o call I have tried to keep my homepage there a place of interest....

www.fornobravo.com/forum/members/cannyfradock-albums.html

Great to see that you're not just stopping at pizza's with your beautiful beast.......

Terry

[wjw]

Thanks for the compliments on the bread, gentlemen. It is a lot of bread but there's no worry about waste. I've been giving away loaves of sourdough to the neighbors, friends, and relatives. No shortage of those willing to accept a warm loaf of sourdough. And even for the odd loaf which gets stale before getting eaten, I had begun chopping it up into small cubes and throwing it in the freezer. Week before last I had accumulated the equivilant of about three loaves so went online and found a recipie for a New Orleans style bread pudding. (Lot's of cinnimon and sugar topped with a sauce made of bourbon and lemon zezt.

I'm trying to improve on the sourdough thing. I think the key is a good starter, and competent advice/critique. I have been fortunate in having both and, for only having been baking about six weeks, I am actually doing much better than I expected I'd be at this stage. Here is a pic from my most recent bake.




Jay is "Texassourdough" and Faith is "Faith in Virginia". As with many around the UK forum, both of them have been very generous in their advice with me and plenty of other beginners. They are both regulars on the Hearthbread and Flatbread forum. Jay just started a blog called Jay on Bread which is shaping up to be very interesting.

I'm having fun with the oven, but I've fallen into that familiar trap of stopping the building (and starting the cooking) the moment the oven is functional. I need to finish the exterior of the oven!!! As soon as I get underway again I'll be posting pics of my progress.

Bill

[wjw]

Haven't posted in a while. Thought I should bring my thread up to date. I had been focusing on cooking lately but I've made lots of progress lately.


Here are some pics as the oven progressed recently. (The red pavers are all just temporary and not motared in place. We were having a party and I wanted to cover up all the insulation/concrete slab. I plan on covering everything but the front firebrick arch with stucco, and will use some type of nice tile for the counter top.)



The photo below shows the only significant crack so far as I can tell. This showed up after the third big fire. (About two months ago.) I have had bunch of fires since then and the has been no change. Because the crack goes right through three bricks (rather than simply joints) I think this was caused by expansion of the floor against the back wall. When I laid that floor out it was tighter than ideal but I figured it wouldn't matter much. Whoops. I was going to make some attempt to patch it or fill it but I've decided not to worry about it. The entire oven is encased in concrete block reinforced with rebar on all sides so there is nowhere for anything to go. As such, I can't see how this crack will be a problem. But if anyone has any other thoughts I'd love to hear them.




Here are a couple of shots of my homade door I use for baking bread, and retained heat cooking on days two, three, and (jerky-making, tomato-drying on day four). Construction is 3/4 plywood on the outside, concrete hardi-board on the inside with shop towels stapled in place. Sandwiched in the middle is one inch-thick Insblock 19. It's not pretty but works great. I wet the shop towels down before putting it in place. That saves the towels from charing too bad and adds steam for bread baking. It really makes a great seal. I've been using it for two months now and once the shop towels got sufficiently charred (after about a month) I ripped them off and stapled new ones in place.





As you can see, I get a little smoke out the front when first starting the fire, but once the flue gets hot it draws great. The oven works great.

Here's the oven in action fire roasting a bunch of garlic cloves to put on pizza. You can also see where I cut the bottom half of the entry slightly wider with my angle grinder. I had a very large round (22 inch diameter) roasting pan which would be perfect for braising a huge amunt of lamb, osso bucco, whatever. So I made it fit. The door still seals perfectly.





Two pizzas...On the left, carmalized onion with goat cheese. On the right, spicy italian sausage and mozzerella.


A bunch of sour dough



Getting ready for some day 3 cooking. At about 48-50 hours after the fire goes out (and after baking bread on day two) the oven temp is right around 300 degrees. Perfect for carmelizing garlic cloves and onions for the next pizza bake. After they're done I freeze them in several ziplock quart freezer bags and I'm good to go next time.



Getting close to being done. I had some professional help today...(actually I was the helper.) Pancho works for a buddy of mine and he knocked it out in a hurry. He built a cage over the top of the oven...we filled it with 10 cubic feet of perlite...about four inches worth over the top of the oven. Beneath that is two to three inches of blanket and some scraps of Insblok 19. It should stay hot for a very long time.

Building the cage.




Vent on the back


Scratch coat is mostly finished. Need to cover all the brick work above the arch. The only brick you'll see is the arch and the a single column of brick on each side of the entry. The rest will be covered by stucco.


Getting closer.

Front and side views. The little shelf near the top of the oven on the right is the concrete block (under stucco) used to encapsulate the oven. In order to hide the fact that the oven entry is offset, I started the right side of the roof arch on the inside edge of the block...rather than the outside edge of the block as I did on the right. In addition to making the oven appear to be symetrical, I thought it would be nice to have a little a shelf there to set a drink on, set olive oil on, etc. I need to put some type of surface on the concrete counter...tile, granite, something?





The wires coming out of the side with the blue tape on them are the thermocouple wires. I'm going to put a small cabinet on that side to fit that recess and put a temp gauge in it hooked up to the thermocouples. It will also be large enough to store my IR gun and some gloves, etc.


Relatively big vent on back. Note interior stuffed with perlite...need to put a little hood over it to keep rain out.



View of oven from pool area. We don't get a lot of wind, but what we do get prevails from the direction behind and to the right of the oven. The tall stack does a good job of getting the smoke up and above the protion of the house in the left of the photo. I intentionally lined the oven up so that when standing around by the pool in the evening, you are looking directly into the flame-filled entry of the oven. It looks pretty neat at night.



Bill

[cannyfradock]

Hi Bill

Nice to hear from you.....and love those pics of bread and pizza. I'm also trying to work with sourdough, but with my sporadic baking I often dump my old sourdough...through neglect, then have to start again and wait another week for the levain to be used.

Love the pic of your loaves and the pizza's look good enough to eat

I don't post on the FB forum, but do follow "what's happening" and I have been truly impressed with your results lately.

The crack in the rear of your oven is a challenge to find out why this has happened. The keystone of your arch vault segments may not look perfect, but ....in reality, they are perfect and no downward pressure should be stressed from the the arch. This would give a small crack at the top widening at the bottom. This is'nt the case as the crack is is uniform, from top to bottom. Likewise, the underside of the hearth insulation should also not have moved as this would have given the same...or the opposite affect of a large crack at the bottom, narrowing to the the top.

Although everybody tries to "slow cure" their home built ovens, if I had to guess why this crack appeared, I would suggest that the whole structure had more moisture in the bricks and mortar when fully fired, so when expansion happened.....something had to give.

Also check the "spring point".......the angle where the vertical walls meet the start of the curve for cracks. These cracks should'nt get bigger and won't affect the performance of your oven, but if you wanted to address them, then a tube of fire-cement, pushed into the joints with the aid of a "mastic/skeleton gun" should do the trick.

Terry

p.s......still love the loaves and pizza's you produce from your oven

[wjw]

Thanks Terry.

The crack in the back wall is somewhat puzzling to me....mainly because the crack goes right through bricks. My bricks were not wet. I did not soak them. The other thing is that the back wall was completed four months before my first fire. And we have a very dry climate here. I find it hard to believe that moisture played a role.

Also keep in mind, my back wall sits under the vault...rather than up against it. So the only place where anything is pushing against the back wall is on the bottom at the hearth. And when put that hearth down the bricks were tight to the point that I actually had to use a mallet to tap them into place in some areas against the back wall.

In hindsight that was obviously a significant error...but I didn't know what I was doing and was proud I was cutting the bricks to fit so neatly together. Oh well.

With the way the oven is encapsulated by concrete block, I don't see where the crack should matter. There is block directly behind that crack and going up almost to the level of the roof...and the block is all tied together vertically and horizontally with rebar. I honestly think I'd need a wrecking ball to take that thing down. I hope I'm right.

Thanks for the compliments.

One more thing....Have you tried freezing your sourdough starter? I have frozen mine both in its normal wet state and after spreading it on wax paper to dry, and then folding up and freezing. In both cases the starter jumped back to full activity within two or three days of feeding.

One more thing, you may be aware of this but a week old starter performs nothing like a three week or month old starter. I think you can bake bread with week old starter but I think it is far more difficult and hit or miss. My starter months old and it reached its peak activity level at about a month old. It has stayed that way. When I do a pre-ferment the night before a bake, the sponge more than doubles in size in about four hours. My started didn't perform that way until it was substantially older than a week or two. All that by way of saying, you are probably much better off freezing a mature starter than you are begining anew each time.

That's my opinion anyway.


Bill