The Wood-Fired Blog

man-pizza-peel in wood fired oven

Primavera Wood Fired Feast

Dec 09, 2022

Paul Lessard is cooking up a storm in his custom-colored Primavera70! Check out his story and sample photos of his delicious creations here. Wood Fired Inspirations Currently hailing from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Paul shared, “I’m sure I was Italian in my previous life! Since traveling to Italy many times, and especially, our latest Tuscany family bike and wine trip in 2017 at a restored 500-year-old farmhouse, complete with a Forno... Read More

loaf

Five Pounds of Sugar in a Three Pound Bag (or Loaf Pan)

Nov 12, 2012

I’ve been having a mismatch between my desire to use Baker’s Percentages in grams and American loaf pans. Baking in grams is one of the best things to ever happen to me. OK, that might be an exaggeration, but it’s still a big deal. Weighing everything on a digital scale eliminates measuring cups and measuring spoons, it’s faster, it’s more accurate and there isn’t anything to clean up afterward. What... Read More

Pre-Fermentation

Oct 04, 2012

Most people who bake bread or read some of the really nice bread cookbooks out there (and there are some really good ones) know how important pre-fermentation is. It extracts more complexity and flavor from you flour and it allows your yeast more time to work on your flour, giving your bread better flavor and better shelf-life. Or, as the good people at Wikipedia (oh, wait. That’s all of us)... Read More

Dough Storage and Refrigeration

Jul 24, 2012

Time to get a covered, air-tight dough storage container. If you take a look at this photo, you can see that a pretty thick and dry skin developed on my whole wheat oat dough overnight while it rested in the mixing bowl covered with a towel. I stretched and folded it out, and it will get re-hydrated inside the dough ball, but I don’t think this is a good thing. Read More

Dough and Refrigeration

Jul 23, 2012

Longer fermentation times release more flavors from the grains we use and gives the yeast and enzymes in our dough more time to break down the carohydrates that are present. I recently read that a well developed dough can have up to 300 different flavor molecules. My guess is that we all pretty understand this at some level, but in general we might be too busy or rushed to actually do... Read More

Cuisinart Update

Jul 13, 2012

It might be as simple as learning to work with a new appliance — or perhaps the Cuisinsart mixer does not have a comparable mixing action and bowl design with the KitchenAid. But I seem to be having trouble getting my entire batch of dough to mix into a nice ball, where the mixer leaves unmixed flour at the bottom of the bowl. There is also a lot of dry... Read More

Steel Cut Oats

Jul 12, 2012

According to Wikipedia, steel cut oats are: Steel-cut oats are whole grain groats (the inner portion of the oat kernel) which have been cut into pieces. They are commonly used in Scotland and Ireland to make porridge, whereas rolled oats are used in England, other English-speaking countries, and Scandinavia. They are sometimes named after the grade of cut, e.g. pinhead oats; steel-cut oats from Ireland are sometimes called Irish oats. Steel-cut oats take longer to cook than instant or rolled oats... Read More

Pizza Oven Bread Baking Temperature

Jun 28, 2012

There is a trade-off when baking bread between higher temperature baking, which gives you a lighter, crisper crust, and more moderate (lower) baking temperatures, which give your bread a thicker and denser crust. Of course not all breads are the same, and a sourdough miche typically sports a thicker, chewier crust, why traditional light, yeasted breads, such as baguettes and ciabatta’s, have the thinnest and crunchiest of crusts. But I... Read More

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