Measuring heat stored in the brickwork

Latest ebay purchase.  This is a digital thermocouple amplifier that came with two thermocouples that can go up to 500 Deg C and one stainless steel probe, total price was 12GBP.

The 2 thermocouples will be buried in the hearth at different depths.

Bread making with Polish flour

Flour here in Poland, and I have looked into this quite extencivly, is low protine, 7 -8%, winter wheat, spelt is also available. This posed some difficulties to start with as it is not very easy to use a recipe you find on a uk or US website and get the results you expect.  I did not really start to get good results from my baking until I abandoned this idea and looked for other parts of the world where they also have a history of baking with low gluten flour. After experimenting with various doughs I have found that rustic styles, similar to ones found in southern Italy work realy well.

My usual bake starts with my own sourdough starter that I expand by adding 500g of flour and 500ml of water.  I use a 100% hydration for my starter and sponge in order to keep the calculations simple. I ferment this sponge overnight or all day before adding 2kg more flour with 30g of salt and enough water to end up with a nice wet, 78% approx final dough.  A 20 min rest and a 10 minute hand kneeding is enough to develop the dough ready for fermentation.

Fermentation ats every stage is done cool, around 15 deg C, in order to heavily favour the yeast action of bacterial development in attempt to produce a subtle sour flavour rather than a more sour bread that is achieved at higher temperatures. Fermentation takes at least 8 hours.

The dough is divided into different sizes depending on the tins or trays I am using, rolled on olive oil and then left to rise.  I don't really shape, the dough is too wet for that, instead I bake in the tins.  This is a part of my process that I will  change once the oven is built, as I plan to cook most of my bread directly on the brick hearth.

I will go into the baking part of the process in later posts as we have only just got a new oven for our kitchen and with only two bakes complete, I am far from having this optimised and ready to blog about it.

Starting out - The bread builders

When I first got interested in building a bread oven, I bought this book.  It is a fantastic resource for understanding the basic design of a wood fired bread oven, the design described in here is a good first oven to build, if you dont want to risk coming up with you own design, then this is a really good starting point.  Alan Scott, one of the co-authors, is unfortunately no longer alive, he has been responsible for a large number of people getting into baking fantastic bread in real bread ovens.  His research has largely been the inspiration for for my design, but by utilizing modern materials, I have made a few improvements to reduce heat bridges and increase structural resilience.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Bread-Builders-Hearth-Masonry/dp/1890132055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386231613&sr=8-1&keywords=bread+builders

My Plans for a wood fired, masonry barrel vault oven.

4th December 2013 - Time to build an oven

I have been baking all of the bread we eat in our household for about two years.  I have even got my Dad cooking all the bread that him and my mother eat.  I also like to bake buns and pastries.  It's a bit of a trend in my life, that once I get into something, I have take it a bit further, often too far.  I usually produce enough to give a little away each bake, but there is so little and I like to be able to keep everyone happy.  I would also like my bread to be even better, as a result I have decided to build an oven. I have been waiting to build this for some time, have re-designed it numerous times and now we have almost finished building the our house, it is now time.

Here is my design;

This is a stored heat oven, internally fired using wood.  It is my modern interpretation of a traditional oven found all over the world.  This type of often called a barrel vault oven, a name given to this shape of masonry oven. 

Still a lot to complete inside our house, like build a kitchen and lay some floors, but it is looking almost finished from the outside.  This is my last project, every little bit was designed my me while we were living in the Netherlands.  Its been a lot of hard work, we have not used any contractors, most of the hard graft has been done by a young man we have been employing who had no previous experience of building, so I have had to teach every technique and method we have used over the two years this project has been running for.

Almost finished, nappies on the line from our 10 month old little girl Dorothy.

The temporary structure built to keep us dry while we work on this build.

A few alder logs seasoning ready for firing.  Correct length for this oven, 1 meter,  far too thick, they will need to be sliced down to about 3cm thick to burn at the correct speed.

The reinforced concrete support slab with load bearing,  Foamglas insulation covering the slab and a plywood form in which we will be using as a mold to create a 5cm slab of cast refractory.  The small form inside the main will leave the opening for the ash slot.

The fire-clay bricks, ready to form the main structure and heat storing mass of the oven.

A detail drawing of the lintel that will be cast from refractory, it includes the transition between oven and chimney.