Welcome!
As we creep into the cooler fall weather, it's a good time to fire up your oven and invite people over for a friendly fall feast!
Chef Bart shares some of his favorite pizza toppings and wood fired oven recipes as we welcome Chef Lea Bergen into the Forno Bravo community. Be sure to watch her video featuring a pizza dough recipe using gluten-free flour.
Our Bella line of pizza ovens is announcing its own celebrity chef: Brigit Binns! Brigit demonstrated her recipes in a Bella oven at last month's Expo and will now be creating more recipes to share from her culinary school. Read more about Brigit in the newsletter. Our Expo host, Talbott Vineyards, recently used their Roma to throw an "end of harvest" party for their vineyard associates. See those photos and lots more in this month's newsletter.
We are always available to answer your questions about wood fired ovens during business hours at (800) 407-5119. Or just send us an email through our contact form on the website.
The Forno Bravo Team
Community Cookbook
Chef Bart Hosmer shares about his favorite things for wood fired pizza in the Forno Bravo Community Cookbook.
For the past year, Chef Bart has given the Forno Bravo community the great fortune of reading, seeing and tasting his wood fired oven recipes in the Community Cookbook. We want to thank Chef Bart for his time, talent, creativity and photography skills that have brought his culinary creations to life and, hopefully, inspired his readers to try something new in their ovens. You may still see a new recipe posting from time to time from him, but for now, enjoy this recipe from Chef Bart.
A Few of My Pizza Oven Favorites
A little more than a year has taught me a few things about pizza out of a Forno Bravo pizza oven. To name just a few: the woods and the flavor of smoke; the fire and how to trust in the dome-licking flames; the illusion of controlling the dough, yeast, humidity and time; and of course the toppings' spicy, sweet, tart, bold, creamy, sharp and all delicious. The most important lesson is to have fun, relax and enjoy. Read more
Hope you enjoy. Until next time, feast well.
- Chef Bart
Chef Lea Bergen
It's with great enthusiasm that I post my first recipe in the Forno Bravo Community Cookbook! I'm very excited to share both written recipes and video demonstrations from my Forno Bravo Toscana wood fired oven.
Pasta and bread are my two favorite foods, so it was with a certain amount of skepticism that I agreed to try Caputo's new gluten-free flour. Once I got over the significant textural differences in the dough, I was impressed to taste a crunchy crust with a nice bit of chew. Since there's no wheat to impart flavor to the dough, you might want to consider adding some fresh herbs or spices to add a little zing. Read the recipe here and watch my video demonstration on the Forno Bravo Community Cookbook Youtube channel here.
Ci sentiamo presto!
Lea
Forno Bravo Casa Helps Build a Community
In 2014, The Murer House Foundation (a little non-profit that protects the historic Giuseppe Murer House in Folsom, California) raised funds to buy a Forno Bravo Casa2G110 modular oven kit. They were fortunate enough to enlist the local Rotary Club of Folsom (which includes a lot of contractors) to build it, along with a bocce court at the historic site. No one had seen a Forno Bravo oven before, but the work was seamless and went off without a hitch, despite previous experience.
According to Board of Directors Chair Cindy Baker, "Forno Bravo provided excellent support throughout the process." Work started in Spring 2015 and finished in October. The project has created a lot of buzz, and the pizzas started rolling out as soon as the cure was complete. A generous tree farm donated a supply of oak wood to get them started and everyone is enthused about using the oven.
Plans are underway now for wood fired cooking classes, to add to the full line-up of Italian cooking and language classes they offer. The oven will also be a central feature of the new baking club, where members can bring their bread, ready to bake one day a month. Everyone gets an allotted time and enjoys each other's company (and the bocce court) while they wait for their bread to finish.
Learn more about this non-profit, all-volunteer organization at www.murerhouse.org and check out their Facebook page to see more photos of the Casa project and how it's being used.
In This Issue
Chef Bart's Favorite Things
Bella and Chef Brigit Binns
New Products in Forno Bravo Store
New Pizza Quest Webisode
Announcing: Cooking with Bella and Chef Brigit Binns!
Join cookbook author, food blogger and culinary instructor Brigit Binns as she shares recipes and cooking tips from her Bella Grande Oven at her culinary retreat, Refugio Paso Robles. Brigit, who lives and works in the wine country of Central California, is lucky enough to have turned her passion for food and the outdoors into a career, authoring and co-authoring more than 30 cookbooks-many of them for Williams-Sonoma-and contributing to many more. Aside from working with culinary greats such as Joachim Splichal, Michael Psilakis, and Ryan Farr, Brigit's blog "Road Foodie" has been named by the Huffington Post as one of the "Best Food and Drink Websites." She and her husband, actor Casey Biggs (aka "Paso Wine Man"), own and manage Refugio Paso Robles, a culinary retreat/teaching kitchen/luxury vacation rental in the heart of the Central Coast wine region. Please join us in welcoming Brigit Binns as our guest chef at Bella Outdoor Living!
NEW PRODUCTS:
Forno Bravo Store
Gluten-Free Flour
If you haven't been able to enjoy a wood fired pizza because you can't find a gluten-free flour, now you can join the pizza party, too! The Italian flour manufacturer, Caputo, has introduced Caputo Gluten Free, and it's now available in the Forno Bravo Store. This product is crafted by the masters in Naples using only pure, top quality natural starches and gluten-free flour, blended precisely for superior performance. Visit the store to learn more and order, then watch Chef Lea's video recipe for a wood fired gluten-free pizza dough. Read more about Caputo Fiore Gluten-Free Flour.
Wood Fired Oven Tools Holder
We've had many requests for a free-standing holder for the unwieldy long-handled pizza oven tools. GI Metal has developed an answer with a stylish rack that will keep your tools within reach of your oven. No more falling peels and brushes- just slip them into the rack and they'll be right where you need them. The sturdy marble base holds the rack upright. Go to the store to check out the new tool racks: the single sided tool rack and the dual sided tool rack.
Talbott Vineyards Celebrates End of Harvest
To celebrate the end of the month-long harvest, Talbott Vineyards hosted a pizza party for their associates around their Forno Bravo Roma wood/gas oven. Covering 525 acres, the associates harvested Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes to continue the tradition of award-winning wines. The harvest went very well and the fruit quality was fantastic - the wines are already showing a lot of potential!
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Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart -- New Webisodes!
Peppe Miele, our Virgil of the Vera Pizza Napoletana universe, continues his guided tour in this segment, turning his attention to one of my favorite subjects: dough fermentation. We receive a lot of e-mails asking about how long the dough should be fermented before making the pizzas, and the answers are nearly infinite and weighted with lots of theories and opinions. But Peppe cuts right to the chase as to the fermentation method he prefers for true Naples style pizzas (his answer is on the video, so this is just a tease). Read more
--Peter Reinhart
