Baking weekend - Pizza night

The wood fired oven is fired up ready for tomorrows bake, so we have been making use of the super hot oven this evening and having a pizza night.  

Mmmmm.  Pizza night!

Very excited about tomorrow.  We have pre-orders for all the bread we are baking, yes, completely sold out!  There may even be a little surprise treat for available for tomorrows customers.

Real bread from a real wood fired oven - Baking this Saturday

With the oven just about finished and a few test bakes under our belt, this Saturday will be the first big bake. We almost have more than enough orders from family, friends and Facebook followers than we can deal with this weekend, but we can accept a few more before 7pm this evening.  If you would like to get a loaf Saturday then you have a few more hours to get an order in.  The choice this weekend is our rustic sourdough or our sunflower seed Whole-wheat sourdough.  If demand increases at all, we will be looking to employ a part-time baker is a couple of weeks time to help out.

We can be contacted via google+ or our facebook page.

White Rustic Sourdough

Rustic sourdough, baguettes and Spelt.

This evening we have nice load of bread out of the wood fired oven, including my first sourdough spelt and baguettes along with my normal rustic sourdough.  Very happy with everything that came out the oven, but the baguettes can be improved by modifying the hydration.

Some bread from today's bake

Here is a quick outline of the spelt flour sourdough loaf:

2 KG of spelt flour type 630

200 g of wholemeal spelt flour (fermented as a starter)

30 g sea salt

68% hydration of final dough.

The dough was kneaded for about 10 mins and then stretched a few times during early stages of fermentation which was at a cool temperature overnight.  The dough was then divided into 3 and left to rise in plastic bowls lined with olive oil.  Baking took 30 mins in a hot oven until
the internal temperature was reading 98 C.

Soughdough from 100% spelt flour

Building a wood fired bread and pizza oven - firing door

To improve the air flow while firing the oven, I have been working on a door that is put in place while wood is burning.  The extra large door combined with such a low arch does not really scale down to such a small oven.  Ideally the door / lintel should be a few centimetres lower than the reducer arch so that all hot gasses go up the chimney and not out the door.  In a larger oven the the door would be the same height as this one, but the main arch and reducer arch would be significantly higher.  The oversized door on this oven was always going to be a design trade-off so to compensate, I am experimenting with a firing door that fits behind the baking door, under the lintel.

Testing the firing door

If the proportions of the firing door are correct it will assist with a better, more efficient burn of the oven.  The reduced aperture improves the separation between the air flowing into the oven and the exhaust gasses leaving by the roof of the oven.  Today test has gone well.  The door proportions seem close to optimal, there is no longer any smoke or flames coming out of the door opening and the improved separation of airflow seems to have improved the amount of air flowing into the oven.

Baking light

The only other new feature to the oven is this light, so that I can see a little better when baking.

Looking forward to doing my second full load of bread tomorrow night.

Rustic Sour Dough Loaf

Now the oven has been insulated it is time to try my regular bake in a wood fired oven.  This is the first time I have done my regular weekly bake in a wood fired oven and over the next few weeks I will be refining my technique until I get the results that I want every time.

This week I chose to bake just 9 loaves as I don't yet know how the oven will perform.  As it turns out, the oven holds heat very well and looking at the cooling rate, it looks like we will be able to bake at least 5 full loads per firing.  

not quite a full load

The oven holds steam extremely well which results in a superb oven spring.  I have been experimenting and improving my technique for  a few years, but in a regular oven have never managed to achieve close to these results.

Shame you can't hear the crust crackling as they cool

With the long slow fermentation and natural leaven, this bread take 3 days to make, but the result is incomparable to a commercial baked bread in both flavour and texture.

Good structure to the crumb

There is still some work to do on the oven before we can start to bake seriously, but I think we are not far away now.

Building a wood fired bread and and pizza oven - Insulation and more Insulation

Tomorrow I am planning to bake my third load of bread in the wood fired oven, but this time it is going to be properly insulated.  First I have wrapped the oven in thick aluminium foil, followed by a layer of ceramic blanket and another few layers of aluminium foil.  

Oven wrapped in Aluminium foil and ceramic blanket layers

 The 1.2 cubic meters of Perlite have been pored over the top to fill the void between the inner brickwork of the oven and the exterior cladding.  This gives an average thickness of insulation of about 20 cm.

 Now the insulation is in I have lit a full burn with the oven almost full of wood, pre cut to the correct length.  The fire was lit at the front of the oven and it naturally burns to the back.  The first third of the burn is not very efficient as there is too much fuel/gases being burned as it goes up the chimney, but by the time the fire has reach a third of the way back the wood has been heated so much that it has turned to charcoal.  The remaining fire is super hot, controlled to a nice burn rate.

  Tonight, once the oven has calmed down a bit we will be having pizza.  The oven will then be sealed and left to equilibrate over night, ready for baking sourdough tomorrow.

Building a wood fired bread and pizza oven - A box to hold insulation

It will probably never be said that my choice of exterior cladding for this wood fired oven is anything to look at, but on the other hand in terms of function it is just a box to hold all the insulation in.  In this case that is going to be a very large amount of insulation.  It is thinnest at the front around the door at a thickness of about 11cm.  Around the remainder of the oven there is a gap between oven mass and insulation of approximately 20 cm.  Under the hearth there is 10 cm of Foamglass.

Exterior of the oven

 The outside of the oven has been tack welded together, in each corner there is steel angle which allows some overlap and allows some adjustment of the panels.  The corners were clamped together and checked with a spirit level.  The box is held up by first attaching some lengths of steel to the concrete slab with rawl plugs and  hex head screws.  The panels are then also welded to those lengths of steel.

Foil faced ceramic and mineral wool insulation can be seen

 The front of the oven and the exterior cladding is separated with layers of foil faced insulation, ceramic on the hottest side and then mineral wool.  This needs to be kept separate from my baking so this will be encapsulated with sheet aluminium 0.2 mm thick.  This is  enough to hold its shape, but not so thick that it will conduct lots of thermal energy away from the hot side of the wall envelope.

Aluminium sheet to encapsulate insulation around the door

Tomorrow I am hoping to finish insulating the oven and fire the oven ready to bake on Sunday and Monday.