Hi!
Hello fellow bakers! Richard from Leicestershire, UK here :)
Probably started baking on and off about 10 years ago, for most of that time I rarely baked anything more complicated than a bog standard white bloomer, although I occasionally ventured to a brioche, baguette or ciabatta, to very mixed results! After receiving a pizza oven for my birthday earlier this year, I've been getting back into it properly, and between lurking here and purchasing a copy of Hamelman's Bread, I've been expanding my horizons and learning all about the wonders of bulk fermentation, different ingredients, preferments, etc. Most importantly I've been eating a lot of tasty bread!
Very happy to be joining this community and looking forward to learning from and sharing with you all :)
Welcome, DoughyBoy. This a great place to learn from and celebrate your successes and get honest feedback on your not-so-good bakes. You have a great start with Hamelman's Bread. I'm onto my third edition. I re-read the chapters on ingredients and techniques regularly. It was also the book that taught me about baker's per cent and lots of other tips.
You're off to a great start!
Cheers,
Gavin
Hi Gavin, thanks for the welcome 😊
I've definitely been having more of the not-so-good bakes than the successes lately! (All bread tastes good though so I can hardly complain 😋) I'm looking forward to getting that honest feedback and tips on how I can improve - it's hard to figure out what you're doing wrong when you're still very much a beginner!
Looking at some of the posts on this site, reading through community bakes, etc. it's clear this community has a huge amount and variety of experience, and even more generosity to share it 🙂 really looking forward to being a part of it.
Welcome to TFL! (Where some of us are half-baked, but no one is real crummy.)
If you're using your pizza oven for bread....
There are at least a half dozen posts/threads over the last 2 years dealing with that subject and how to manage the upper heating element so that the radiant heat from the upper heating element doesn't bollocks up your bloomers.
Hi Dave!
The pizza oven (an Ooni Koda 16) is primarily for pizza, although I'm sure I'll end up experimenting with it! Thanks for the heads up, I'll definitely go digging for those posts 🙂
Honestly my whole oven situation isn't great for baking right now, we don't have an appropriate space for the pizza oven to stay set up so it doesn't get as much use I'd like, and we have a crappy old gas oven in the kitchen which gets red hot in some areas and stays lukewarm in others 😅
Moving house in the next couple of weeks though so looking forward to christening the new kitchen and getting the whole place smelling of fresh bread 😁
I incorrectly assumed it was an electric counter-top model.
I looked up your model. Looks nice!
I could be wrong, but I don't suppose it would be amenable to baking loaf bread. The schematic shows a 4.5"/115 mm interior height, but it looks like you need to subtract the thickness of the stone to get the true measurement.
But for flatbreads -- focaccia, naan, pita, chapati, parathi, barbari, lavash, bannock, oat cakes, fougasse, arepas, cornbread, etc. -- looks like you got a winner.
and at 16" interior width/depth, woo!, family size pizza!
I wonder if a door comes as an accessory for baking, so you could turn off the flame and bake with just the residual heat.
Ooh great idea about baking with the residual heat! They do make doors for the wood fire versions of these ovens, but not for the gas versions (probably for safety reasons I guess). I'm sure I could ratchet something custom together (and disconnect the gas!) if I did decide to try that out 😁
Ooni do actually have a baguette recipe on their website, so I guess baking in there must be possible! I'll probably try and get more experience of normal baking though before I graduate to hard mode, 420°C baking 😆 although you've tempted me by the idea of doing naan in there now 🤤