Outdoor Cooking Fanatic

[Bill/SFNM]

I have just joined this group after seeing a post on the LTHForum from James.

I have an outdoor kitchen with 5 stations:

1. Wood-burning brick oven
2. Wood-burning offset BBQ pit with three chambers
3. Charcoal grill/rotisserie
4. Wok burner
5. 100 KBTU burner

Although I use at least one of these stations each day, the brick oven gets the most use since baking pizza and bread is my passion. For the most part, I have learned to use the brick oven by trial and error. I look forward to learning better techniques from this forum and contributing whenever I can.

Bill/SFNM

[james]

Hello and Welcome Bill,

I am looking forward to hearing about your cooking. I'm a trial-and-error guy myself (although I've taken a few cooking classes recently).

Could you post some of your experiences baking bread. I think there is a shortage of information on that, which might be helpful. Do you use Caputo for bread and pizza?

James

[Bill/SFNM]

James,

I have tried using Caputo for bread since I have so much of it. The most successful attempt was in making "Cuban" bread, the kind used for roast pork sandwiches that are grilled in a hot press. But for just about every other kind of bread, I use KA Bread flour.

The best bread that I bake in the brick oven is adapted from a Jeffrey Steingarten article about Roman-style pizza bianco. It is awesome, but very tricky because the dough is extremely sticky and loading it into the oven is very unforgiving. I'll post recipe and pictures next week, I'm getting ready to leave town for a few days.

Bill/SFNM