Hello!
I'm a new(er) bread baker. I built a brick oven this past summer for pizza and hated wasting the residual heat. So, I did some research and trial and error and am baking bread. Friends & family can't get enough of it. I don't think they will let me change the current recipe, but I'm definitely getting ready to try some new recipes. I'd appreciate if some of you experts could review my recipe(s) and give me a critique. Here goes.
I recently (last Saturday) received my new Electrolux DLX mixer. I promptly made a 1/2 batch of bread dough on Saturday and full batch of pizza dough on Sunday. It worked excellent, although I know I have to find my routine with it.
My hearth bread recipe in bakers %:
50% Caputo 00 flour
50% Kyrol or All Trumps hi-gluten flour
63% Water
.62% IDY
1% Kosher Salt
1% Brown Sugar
1% Olive Oil
With the Electrolux, I poured the water and olive oil in the mixer, then added 75% of the flour a cup at a time until it was all incorporated, then a 25 minute autolyze. After that I added the IDY, sugar & salt and then the balance of the flour until it came to the consistency I wanted. I gave it a few folds and let it rise on the counter for 2 hours. I punched it down and placed in a covered bowl in the fridge. After 4-5 hours it will rise beyond the bowl, so I degas and replace. It will be in the fridge for a min of 12 hours. The next day I take the dough out of the fridge and let it come to room temp. Then I cut & shape my loaves and let them rise under a towel for another 2 hours. Slash and bake. In the brick oven, I load them in when my hearth temps are around 575* and remove when the internal is around 205*. In my kitchen oven, I use a stone on the top rack and stone on the bottom rack and bake 3 loaves at a time on an inverted cooking sheet on top of the bottom stone. I also spray the tops with water and steam the oven. The crusts come out a beautiful brown and are nice & crusty.
The crumb on Sunday's batch came out very uniform and there were no large pockets, like I usually get. I think that I may need to do the fold from the video I watched here after the Electrolux is done doing it's thing. The texture is strong and the flavor is excellent. My Italian side of the family has compared it to the old local bakeries that were throughout our community in the '70s & back.
Comments on the procedure & recipe are welcome!
OK, I'll slap you on the back. Sounds to me like a good low salt recipe. It's a keeper.
Mark has a good video on shaping, that might help with reducing large air pockets.
Read around and experiment. Try some other flours too or adding seeds. How many loaves do you bake on Bake day?
Mini
Thanks for the slap! I have a local gristmill I've been meaning to stop by and pick up some different flours. I'll have to do that soon. A normal batch yields me about 15# of dough which ends up as approximately 10-12 500g loaves and about a dozen buns on bake day. This is 2 1/2 loads and only about 2 hours of baking. I could definitely bake for 4-6 hours with one charge on the oven. I can comfortably bake 6 loaves or 2 dozen buns at a time. The oven will hold more, but it more manageable this way. I was reading "Crust & Crumb" last nite, and I think I'm going to make a poolish Friday, dough Saturday and bake Sunday.
Depending on what type of oven you have (i.e., how much mass), this might give you some ideas.
Pizza on the highest heat, while the fire is still in the box. Roasting peppers and other veggies works well while firing as well. Perfect for Pizza toppings.
Next comes the bread -- maybe even a couple of loads -- or the dinner, like a roasted chicken or turkey. Note: when doing the bread, I bake it on parchment to avoid the need for mopping the oven floor and steam only lightly with a garden sprayer on fine mist -- to conserve the heat.
Next comes the chocolate chip cookies. ;-) (That has a high "wow factor" when you have guests - just when they were thinking things couldn't get any better. Brownies work well for this too.)
Next (and my personal favorite) is the dry-rubbed pork butt, left in the falling oven for 12-14 hrs. (That meat just jumps off the bone.) If I'm not doing pork, I'll coke my next batch of wood, leaving it in the box until the next time I fire it up.
ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA
ClimbHi,
When cooking your pork roast how do you pan it...in a foil pan/cover no cover ext...and at about what temperature when you first put it in for a 12 hr bake is your wfoven? I have done turkey and it was very nice done in two foil pans set on pan sheet on top of extra fire bricks and only uncovered for extra browning..lovely smokey flavor. Would love some pics! Thank you for the info.
Sylvia in San Diego
We make up a dry rub, heavy on the Cajun, and put it in a roaster. Our one attempt at using a cheap foil pan resulted in the pan collapsing when My Lovely Assistant was removing the butt from the oven, spilling hot grease all over. Won't go there again! We get the large butts from Costco, 8 lbs or so IIRC.
We cook it uncovered overnight with the roaster just sitting on the hearth. We don't put it in until the oven is below 400°. It usually falls to about 250° during the 12-hr. bake. When it's done, it has a bit of a "crust" where all those great spices live. We separate that, run it through the food processor, and add it back in to the rest of the meat, along with some roasted hot and sweet peppers, carmelized onions and Johnny Walker BBQ sauce.
Bread Forum content: This is best served on sour dough buns, cooked up in the oven prior to loading the pork.
Sadly, I have no pics of wood oven pulled pork. ;-(
Happily, that'll give me an excuse to whip up another batch. ;-)
FWIW, when we do turkey, we usually leave some coals at the edges of the oven and sprinkle herbs & woodchips on them occassionally during the bake to add an extra bit of smokey flavor. I've even done this when baking foccacia -- a nice extra touch of flavor.
ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA
I've done roasted potatoes, beercan chicken, and standing rib roasts, etc. in my wood fired oven. I use pyrex dishes right on the hearth for the potatoes, a disposable foil pan as a drip pan for the chicken, and a roaster with a grate for the standing rib roasts/pork loin, etc. None of those are long cooks though @ around an hour. I have a Big Green Egg for smoking duty and do all my chuck roasts & boston butts on it. ClimbHi, that's an interesting idea of running the bark thru your food processor & mixing it back in with the meat. I'm a long time member on a few bbq boards and have never seen that technique before. One of my favorites to cook the morning after a pizza party is a breakfast focacchia. I go light on the salt & a little heavy on the sugar. When the dough is ready I put it in a pyrex baking dish, press my fingers thru it and then liberally sprinkle a cinnamin/brown sugar mixture on top and then pour melted butter over that. Gets me fired up for waking up on a Saturday morning without snow/ice or temps under 40*!
Thank you ClimbHi, your pulled pork sounds wonderful...Im going out of town twice this month and after Valentine's I'll be back to my baking and WFOven.
I use a cookie sheet under my roasting pans and it will keep everything from making a mess...including the cleanup! I will post a photo here so you can see how we did our first turkey over at my daughter's home for Thanksgiving..it was over a 15lb bird...can't remember exactly...but no mess at it turned out perfect...it had a lovely smokey flavor because we just pushed the the dieing wood coals around the walls of the oven and used extra fire bricks to set the pan on....we even baked a pie next to it. My WFoven is not near as elaborate as she has but does the same cooking job! I often use my iron skillet for roasting potatoes/veg./hot chicken wings. I have a small grill made for use in WFO for grilling steaks...ordered it from Forno Bravo. Also there is a pic. of some Very Popular Kaiser/Onion rolls done in my WFOven...excellent for sandwiches...the recipe comes from a pro.baker on this site and is listed as Norm's Onion Rolls if you would like to search the recipe and more photos!
Im looking forward to seeing your pics. You have a lot more experience with bar-b-que than I do and Im looking forward to useing my wfoven more for baking bread.
Now We Have A Forum especially for Wood Fired Oven Discussion and I'll be putting my posts there! Looking forward to it! Im sure it will be great learning experience.
Sylvia in San Diego, CA
These are Norm's Kaiser Onion rolls!
No mess useing the cookie sheet under the foil pans supports everything! Should be able to do a large pork roast with no mess!
Not bad for a daughter's first bird "ever"..it was tiny bit overdone. But delicious with a lovely smokey flavor.
Now that's a good idea! Some herbs in the smoker. Thanks.
Eric