The Wood-Fired Blog
Half Whole Wheat Ciabatta
Sep 10, 2012One of the advantages of baking a lot of bread is that you get to experiment a lot. You know — mess around. Yesterday I made a non-existent bread (non c’e, or non esiste as you would say in Italian), 50% whole wheat, 50% AP Ciabatta. The funny part of this is that a Ciabatta is a light Italian hearth bread made with a very wet dough and baked in... Read More
September 2012 | No. 42; Expo 2012 & Pesto Seafood Pizza
Sep 10, 2012Welcome to Our Wood-Fired-Blog September 2012 Who’s ready for a food-filled fall? We at Forno Bravo hope you’re enjoying the change in seasons and making good use of those ovens. On the recipe front, our September newsletter includes another great pizza idea from Brad English of Pizza Quest: pesto seafood pizza. We’ve also shared a delectable meat dish from the Community Cookbook. Finally, see the article at right for... Read More
The No-Touch Fire
Sep 09, 2012The top-down technique for building a fire in your wood-fired oven works extremely well. I first heard about the top-down fire in the FB Forum, and it’s great. We now have a video on the Forno Bravo YouTube page, and I have blogged about fire building in the past. Today, I have a little more to add. With a small to mid-size pizza oven, you can load enough wood into... Read More
You Can Only Get So Far Without a Brick Oven
Sep 08, 2012Sometimes you find yourself in a hurry, or in a really busy day, but you still want nice, fresh baked bread. This is particularly true on Fridays. Busy, dinner with the family — those things. So yesterday I had enough time to mix and shape two baguettes, but not enough time to fire my Strada oven. Or, way it a lack of energy, rather than a lack of time. Hmmm.... Read More
A Forno Bravo Pizza Oven in a 1952 Chevy Pickup Truck
Sep 08, 2012How cool is this, a Forno Bravo pizza oven in a 1952 Chevy Pickup Truck If you look closely, right above the driver’s side windshield, you can see the chimney pipe and spark arrestor. In their own words: “Pizza Luca offers on-site catering in the tri-state area, including Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties, Fairfield, CT, and Northern NJ. We’re also available for private engagements in New York City. We follow all the... Read More
Getting Organized
Sep 07, 2012Time for some time-and-motion organizing. Every minute counts when you are making bread nearly every day, so I have ordered some Oxo storage containers. That way, I will always know where everything is, it will be easy to use and I won’t spill as much — meaning I won’t have to do as much clean up. Don’t you find that you are always pouring flour all over the place when... Read More
Outdoor Fireplace from DwellingGawker
Sep 06, 2012Check out this stylish Outdoor Fireplace from DwellingGawker. That is very nice work. It reminds me of the Bell Gabled houses in Amsterdam. Read More
Another Day, Another Over-Proofed Loaf
Sep 05, 2012The upside of this is that I haven’t made this mistake for a while. My boule was over-proofed before my oven was ready — you could definitely tell. The outer skin of the loaf was very soft and almost ready to fall in; it wasn’t even firm enough to properly score. The problem? I can track it all the way back to my dough prep — where quickly measuring my... Read More
Feathers and Insulation
Sep 05, 2012Insulation is a topic that I always find interesting. Thinking back to my first brick oven, and trying to work out how high heat retention and insulation work, and the various roles that bricks, concrete, sand and vermiculite play — it was all a lot of fun. Besides, what the heck is vermiculite anyway? Along similar lines, I heard an interesting Podcast today on Fresh Air about “feathers”. According to... Read More
