Friday, November 25, 2016

Brilliant Pizza Oven

Check out this pizza oven that treats the environment with a soft touch. Watch the video here:

http://breadtopia.com/store/uuni-2s-pizza-oven/

Uuni 2S Pizza Oven

Monday, November 7, 2016

Easy Earth Oven

Here's a little video I made of my son this past summer. You can watch a simple oven being constructed that didn't cost anything to build, and the whole project was done in just a couple of hours.

https://youtu.be/qIYxTcWTM3w

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

If you ever wanted to have a pizza oven in your backyard, then join us at The Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine (July 28-29) and learn how to build various types of wood-fired pizza/bread ovens. You can expect lots of individual attention from two instructors. No experience required. Participants will work with clay and brick and construct a low-cost earth oven that will make the best pizzas and breads. Discussions include techniques for making various kinds of wood-fired ovens as well as baking pizzas, flat breads, sourdough, and no-knead breads.

Unique sourdough starter will be shared with participants.

More information here: www.stusilverstein.com

Monday, May 9, 2016

Oven Door

Here's a photo of the new oven door with two handles. The two handles are necessary because the door is heavy.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Oven In Provence

Here is a recently completed pizza oven in Provence France. The oven will not be used for bread baking so the oven opening was made extra wide to easily accommodate two pizzas with plenty of room to maneuver them around.

The location

Constructing the base with native stone

Preparing base for concrete slab

Continuing slab preparation

Rebar for slab

Creating slab

Slab finished

Creating template for dome

Constructing the dome

Completed oven

Waiting for door to be fabricated

The oven builders

To my right Abdel Fatah

To my left Fernand Toucourt

Oven Specifications

Made with native stone and firebrick. Insulated with vermiculite and Roxul. Stuccoed with mortar mix.

28.5” interior width

41.5” interior depth

16.5” interior dome height

42.5” baking height

3.5” interior concrete slab

Monday, March 14, 2016

Two Miserable Weeks

This past winter I spent two miserable weeks trying to improve my bread baking skills. Actually, it wasn’t all miserable because I learned quite a bit.

For years I had been scooping flour and eyeballing most everything, but I was, however, careful about salt. That I measured.

The “pros” said, to do it “right” you must weigh all ingredients. Well I did, and I can assure you that it wasn’t fun. They also said that temperature control was extremely important. It’s not.

Look. There’s a world of difference between baking professionally and baking for yourself and friends. The pro must strive for consistency of product or his customers might take a dim view of never quite knowing what they’re buying. To be absolutely consistent, then all ingredients must be weighed, and if you’re using sourdough starter, then it is no easy feat to prevent your starter from changing. It is far easier to use instant dry yeast because it’s always the same, but sourdough simple makes a better bread.

Everybody has the potential of making excellent sourdough bread, but the wild card is your starter. If your starter is not “right,” then your bread will fail. Learn to make and maintain a starter, and you are on your way to making great bread.

Bubbling Starter

If it is cold in your kitchen, then your dough will take longer to rise, but a “cool” dough is much easier to handle. If it’s hot in your kitchen, then things will happen much faster, and it could get out of hand. Warm, sticky doughs are very difficult to handle. Keep it cool if you can. Use a little more starter in the winter and less in the summer, and that’s assuming you live in an area of seasonal changes.