Monday, May 10, 2010

Plop.


Ker plunk. A huge chunk of sand plopped Right down on top of the pizza. It promised to be a good one too, artichoke and goat cheese.
The next day I went out and scraped the ceiling with my three pronged fork. A bit more sand came off but the pizza and Murphy got most of it.

Not quite


"Do you think it's done". "No, not quite" John said. "I will leave it in just a little...".

Sliding it in.


Here I am using my new peel to slide the pizza into the oven. This time the temperature, just above the oven floor, is 400 degrees F.

Lucky Find.


Here is the second Pizza. It is sitting on an aluminum peel that I found that morning at the flea market. I just missed one of those giant pizza knives, the kind with handles on either end. But I did get some restaurant style pizza pans (which I think I will use for serving, but maybe baking too) and some stainless steal condiment pans.

Flopped; but good

Here it is, the first pizza. A simple margarita style. I tried to take it out too soon and the back got scrunched a little (that is what I am picking up here). But, once it was properly cooked it came out fine. I think the oven floor was a bit too hot though as the bottom was scorched. No, make that, charred. I had set a thermocouple on the oven floor just prior to cooking and it registered 600 degrees F on my digital thermometer. I think the actual hearth temperature was probably considerably hotter though since I had the fire right on top of it four a couple of hours before moving it back to bake the pizza.

Speaking of fire, this was the second day of firing. I started, I am guessing, around 11:00 am with small fires. As the day progressed I built larger fires, mostly because I was tired of trying to split the oak that we had in our wood pile (very hard) and started using the smaller pieces of wood (about 3" in diameter). At one point I formed some clay around my thermocouple and stuck it in the fire. It was well above 1,000 degrees F. The ambient temperature inside the oven stayed around 400 degrees most of the day. I think most of the energy went to drying the clay. Around 4:00 the clay stopped steaming and the oven temperature started raising.

At this point I went inside and took out two portions of the pizza dough that I had made the day before and had raising in the refrigerator. I will post the recipe later. We put the first pizza on at 6:00 pm.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Hail


Hail has pushed us back under the porch. We let the fire burn down and scraped the coals into and old cast iron Dutch oven and put the lid on it. The chimney cooled off quite fast so we were able to put the tarp back on. We will try again tomorrow; it is suppose to be nicer.

Earlier today I made a batch of pizza dough, in anticipation of being able to make some pizza tomorrow night. Maybe a bit optimistic but the dough will be fine in the fridge for a few days or I can freeze it.

Still Drawing


Even with the fire pushed back the chimney is still drawing.

Pushing the fire back.


As the oven heats up I can push the fire back a bit further. I will use a hoe to do this.

First Fire


It is a little hard to tell here, but the fire took right off and the chimney started to draw.

Ready to light

Looks like it stopped raining for the day, so I will light a small fire.