The Wood-Fired Blog
Raisin-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Oct 15, 2012What do you do when you are baking, cinnamon raisin bread, and you don’t have any raisins? Punt? No. You use a mix of chopped, dried apricots, and dried cranberries. And it came out really nicely. This is my second attempt at Peter Reinhart’s Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Bread, and it’s a keeper. I made a couple of modifications to my first batch, including adding more cinnamon to the dough,... Read More
The Napolino is Here.
Oct 15, 2012Exciting news. We have finished the Napolino and it is now available for sale. Wahoo. The Napolino ovens are available in two sizes (24″ and 28″), with and without the black powder-coated stand — so that you can set it on a custom stand or a BBQ island, or use our stand and set it on your patio. It just looks so cool; we’re really excited. It comes standard... Read More
Critiquing my Baguettes
Oct 12, 2012I had some fun trying new things yesterday baking baguettes. Sadly, it was raining, so I didn’t fire my outdoor oven and had to do this indoors. In general, I have a couple of takeaways. First, flour matters. I’ve been experimenting with different flours for my white hearth bread and have been using a lot of Trader Joe’s All Purpose Flour, and try as I might, I just couldn’t get the... Read More
Now That is a Cool Outdoor Fireplace
Oct 12, 2012Norwegian architecture firm Haugen/Zohar has created an outdoor fireplace that brings a whole new meaning to having a bonfire. And they did it with leftover building materials. Talk about making a design work. Wow. You can read the entire article — and see more great photos — on www.redesignrevolution.com. Read More
Mozzarella di Bufala on the Cover of the NY Times
Oct 11, 2012Talk about fond memories. We stayed at an Agriturismo in Paestum in Campania years ago, when the kids were still small, and we had a wonderful time. The grounds were beautiful, the food was great, the other families staying at the inn were interesting, the Magnia Grecia ruins were excellent — and the Agriturismo has a herd of water buffaloes for mozzarella di bufala. Makes me wish the kids we... Read More
October 2012 | No. 43; The Napolino Series & FB Expo 2012
Oct 10, 2012Welcome to our Wood-Fired Newsletter October 2012 Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about pizza ovens and innovation. Thanks to advances in technology and new materials, we at Forno Bravo are always developing fun and interesting oven designs – and making wood-fired ovens available to an ever-growing audience. On that note, we are introducing the Napolino Series, a Napoli-style oven for backyard cooking that combines traditional design with cutting-edge... Read More
Getting Even More Organized
Oct 10, 2012My Oxo storage containers arrived from Amazon today, and everything is looking pretty good. Mise-en-place gone wild. Still, everybody must have experienced the pain of dumping a bag of sesame seeds on the ground while rooting around trying to find the whole wheat flour. Right? So I think it’s worth the effort. These are flax seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, dark rye flour, sugar and raisins (empty) in the middle... Read More
Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Oct 08, 2012This Cinnamon Raisin Bread is from Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Bread cookbook, and it came out really well. Peter describes this as a transitional recipe for a bread that lies somewhere between a nice whole wheat bread, and a sticky cinnamon roll. In general, you make a nice soft whole wheat bread using milk and an egg, plus honey, olive oil and cinnamon, and then flatten the dough and cover... Read More
Pre-Fermentation
Oct 04, 2012Most 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
