September 6, 2015 - 10:45am
Laser Thermometer for Brick Oven
These are inexpensive and handy when reading the temp of stone. Except, I learned recently that it should be checked to make sure it is on the measurement your familiar with. Loaves yesterday in the wood oven would have been great at 480F, but didn't notice the reading was 480 C, or 896 F... Looks like i wont make that mistake again!
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I'm immensely jealous of anyone with a brick oven, how fast do your loaves cook? ~10 minutes?
Oven full of ciabatta's, 8-10 is about 30 min. 4 batards or 6 boules 35- 40 min. Such a better crust color with the wood oven.
Might cook faster if i went above 500F but i havent yet. I was shooting for 550 or 600 yesterday, but ended up with 896F instead. Thats not a good temp for loaves :)
Ah, Della Fattoria bakes their breads in as quick as 10 minutes, Louise Bannon posted on Instagram about them. Their deck is 400-450F and their ambient temp. is 600-650F. Pretty interesting :)
I will check that out thanks, i might be over doing it. We onky use whole wheat with high hydration, so maybe that lends to linger baking to fully get the inside done, not sure.
Ohhhh, I am so sorry. I have done that. Opening that door and seeing scorched bread is never a fun thing.
boy, today i lost almost 200F over the course of a 30 min bake in the wood oven. I started at 580 and ended near 400. Still so new to this. Is there supposed to be a buffer for thermal mass and heat absorption of the loaves in relation to the stone? in other words if i know i lose that much, should i start that much higher? This would be similar to mashing barley for beer and starting with higher water and knowing the grain will drop the temp so many degrees.
perhaps im not letting the stone rest for long enough after the last fire is finished.
The amount of time that a fire temperature is maintained is quite important with a wood fired oven as you require solid heat rather than just flash heat. The thermal mass that the oven has built into it will also have a huge bearing on that heat retention. When filling the oven with relatively cool dough there is going to be quite a draw on that stored heat. There is always a bit of a balancing act but a good solid fire burning for a good few hours is necessary for that heat to penetrate the bricks so that it can be radiated out again during the bake.
regards Derek
Thanks Derek, much appreciated wisdom there. I will use it for the next firing.
Hi Natyam, after clicking on your name under your avatar it was good to see that you had put in your details (well done) it says that you are interested in brewing, have you combined your baking and brewing yet? I have just bottled a brew of Pale Ale and will be using residues left over for a Beer Barm for my next bake, it is very active when i tested it. I also intend drying some to send to Betsy Teo who lives in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia where bottle fermented beers don't seem to be on the shelf, and she is desperate to have a go at a Beer Barm.
Also is Kauai in Hawaii?
Kind regards Derek
I have not combined the crafts. My brewing is part of my job, I have to produce enough as head brewer of our place, so not much time to mess with a fermentation, since they are so big.
Sounds like barm is another term for top-cropping?
Yup, Kauai, HI. Smallest and oldest island of the chain. "The Garden Island"
Very nice on a couple of counts, head brewer (someone has got to do it ) and such a beautiful Island to live and work!
regards Derek
Natyam, I prefer to begin heating my oven late in the afternoon, on the day before I intend to bake. Once I have a good bed of coals I'll add a few fairly large pieces of hardwood, close the door and seal it *almost* tight but no so tight that it snuffs the fire.
The next morning I typically have enough coals left to revive the fire. The oven will be around 400F. It then takes little time to bring it up to baking temperature.
Soaking the oven with heat like this usually means that I'll see little drop in temperature from the beginning of a bake to the end.
If I want to take this one step further I'll bank coals to one side of the oven while baking. But, you have to be very careful that your coals are not putting off very much smoke or creosote. I learned this the hard way by add a small chunk of seasoned alder to the coals -- the taste of creosote was so strong that I had to throw out all six loaves of bread.
By the way... mine is a cob oven. I'm not sure if this method would work with a smaller brick oven.
Those are great tools, I don't know what i'd do without it.
All,
What has worked best for me, was a few fires the day before. Each is built pretty strong, then I let them burn down to coals, and seal. I let the oven sit and soak-up the heat, then I fire it back up (hot) again...and do the same. I've found the rest period, where the door is closed, and the oven is absorbing heat from the coals, has helped a lot in oven heat retention. My oven has a fair amount of mass.
Have tried heating the oven many times with a blazzing fire most of the day before, but saw a faster temp drop-off over-night, if I didn't let the heat soak-in. Just my experience.
Kevin
Oh no! It happens to the best of us :/
If you ever need wood fired oven tools, we have them on our website as we're a small business in Dallas that sells most of everything for a diy oven :D
https://www.breadstoneovens.com/collections/cooking-tools
Those of you looking for a NICE, inexpensive option for IR thermometers, check out the sale going on at THERMOWORKS.COM
I have an instant read from them, bought them all for my kids for Christmas, and last year bought the IRK-2 - I think I paid $60.00 on sale but they now have it on sale for $39! I would not hesitate to recommend it (I am not affiliated with them in any way).
The kid in me wishes it would go above 1022F, but I'm not cooking anything that high so it really doesn't matter. It's a beautiful thing to take the guess work out of the oven temp when I'm doing pizza and then a batch of sourdough. I'm pretty picky about hitting the correct temperature and this takes all the worry out.