Baguettes!

I know its been ages since I've posted, but since I started cooking there haven't been any major developments. When I'm baking pizza, I can't work on the oven. And lately, all I've been doing has been baking. But today the big development was baguette success. My attempt at baking wood fired bread came out pretty good. They were nicely browned and the insides were soft (though a tad bit chewy). Needs some work with getting a good thick crust (higher temperature I think) and more flavor as this one came out a bit bland. However, these came out nice so I just need to tweak the recipe a bit.

Now, I need to decide if I should work on the oven next week or bake again. Sigh. Decisions, decisions!

You might be wondering what else needs to be done, now that the oven is fully operational. Its actually mostly aesthetics, but will make the whole thing look nice. From the picture below, you can see that the outer cement coat is complete, it just needs a coat of paint. I need to get that done before the rains start to complete the waterproofing of the oven. I also plan to line the base of oven with brick tiles, since its just plain concrete now.


The main work I want to accomplish is to fix the front of the oven. As you can see below it is still very rough. I plan to put smooth coat of concrete in front and line it with brick tiles to give it a more finished look.


And just so you know, the pizza is still great. I've been experimenting with flour combinations and length of kneading time, to try and get a light dough with crunch. At this point, I am partial to a 50/50 blend of regular bread flour and 00 Italian pizza flour. I plan to try using 100% 00 flour one more time. I did this back when I was just baking in a regular oven and was not happy with the results. But with the wood fired oven and higher temperatures it just might work out.

So I'll leave you with my favorite pizza - Margherita (basic cheese with tomatoes and a sprinkling of fresh basil leaves).