The Wood-Fired Blog
Whole Wheat Walnut Boule
May 23, 201260% whole wheat 20% white whole wheat 20% general purpose flour 73% hydration (going a little higher) 20 grams salt 10 grams yeast 40 grams extra virgin olive oil 30 grams honey 110 grams chopped walnuts (I will use more next time) Mix everything in a stand mixer and knead for 10 minutes on low (the two setting on a KitchenAid mixer). Then a bulk fermentation for about an hour,... Read More
Ice Water, Yeast and Crumb
May 21, 2012This is a follow-up on my earlier posting on High Hydration Dough, where I ask (and answer) the question—”do I need to proof my yeast”?, with a clear and definitive “no”. As a little background, I mixed my flour, salt and yeast, and then added 80% ice water directly to the flour and mixed it. After a two-hour bulk fermentation, I shaped my baguettes, put then on a homemade couch... Read More
Handling Wet Dough and the Couche
May 21, 2012In my previous posting, I made to notes on mixing and kneading high hydration dough (80% in this case), so I wanted to make a couple of notes on working with web dough—and point out a mistake that I made (something I know but need occasional reminding). First, don’t over-flour your work surface, or the dough, when handling wet dough. You can add a little bit of extra virgin olive... Read More
Mixing High Hydration Dough
May 21, 2012I made 80% hydration baguette’s, and was reminded just how much longer (and a little faster) you need mix the dough to build the strands of gluten and develop the bread’s structure. That statement marks roughly the end of my technical knowledge on the science of web dough—thought I want to do some more research in order to understand why this is true. From this sequence of photos, you can... Read More
Baguette Shaping with Ciril Hitz
May 20, 2012On YouTube. Baguette shaping from the bulk fermented dough through to finished bread. Everything except how to load a wood-fired oven—they use modern electric bread ovens. The technique is awesome, and I learn a number of things that I am going to be incorporating into my daily baking. Read More
Slightly Over-Proofed Whole Wheat Olive Boule
May 17, 2012My on-going bread experiments are continuing (and are a lot of fun). One thing I am enjoying about my most recent round of dedicated baking is that the family is really enjoying my whole wheat bread—rather than just tolerating it because it’s healthy. To some degree I think that I because we have all been eating a great deal more whole wheat bread over the past few years and everyone... Read More
Whole wheat bread with olives in the Presto Pizza Oven
May 10, 2012Still having a great time with my Presto oven. As an update, I can confirm that I will be working with a second prototype of the Presto within a few days as the final OK before releasing it to production and making it available for sale. To quote Apple on the latest iOS 5.1.1 software update, we are working on “minor improvements and bug fixes”. haha. More seriously, we are... Read More
Whole Wheat Boules in a Small Pizza Oven
May 09, 2012I am enjoying having a small oven in our side garden for the same reasons as the many people who have who have decided to buy our smaller ovens—the Primavera and Andiamo. They are easy to manage, they fire up really quickly and they are just a blast to use. Don’t let the smaller size deceive you; you can do a lot of serious pizza and bread baking in a... Read More
Pain Pascale
Apr 24, 2012We are lucky to live within a few miles of the Trader Joe’s in Pacific Grove, CA. I really don’t know what we would do without it, as I often (and only somewhat jokingly) think our local Supermarket (Save Mart) is out to kill its patrons with artificial additives, preservatives and partially hydrogenated oils. Our favorite markets in Florence were the Co-op on Viale Europa, which is a wonderful big... Read More
