The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [166]
BRICK OVENS
After years of rubbing sticks together for fire and eating in a place that allowed about half an inch per person, we finally were able to build ourselves a kitchen and dining place. We decided to include a brick oven for reasons of economy and ecology—and because we had become addicted to Flemish Desem Bread, which is traditionally baked on the hearth.
A brick oven bakes well because it provides steady, steamy, intense, radiating heat at the beginning and steady, gradually descending dry heat for the rest of the bake. This gives old-fashioned, so-called lean breads (no added fat or sugar or milk) crispy-tender, shiny, ruddy crusts and full, sweet flavor.
We’ve been using our brick oven for three years now, and we love it—not only for the bread it bakes but also for the continuing adventure of firing it, for the marvelous smells, and even for the small measure of independence it gives us from our utility company. Wood-fired bake ovens are still used wherever people make bread, their many styles adapted to the climate of the place they’re built. To give you an idea, here are a few examples.
The oldest and most straightforward kind is one that is also a firebox: a fire is built inside the oven itself, and then when it is hot enough, the coals are raked out and the ashes mopped. The oven is closed down for a while to let the temperatures even out; then the bread is put in and the opening sealed with one or another sort of door. The simplest of these, the beehive oven, is used all over the world in hot climates. Made of adobe or brick, it usually stands outdoors to keep its heat isolated from the living quarters. Our friend Alan Scott, who loves his desem as much as we do, has built a number of four-loaf-sized beehive ovens in his backyard, using heat-resistant concrete. They work wonderfully well.
The most sophisticated and complex design we found came from Finland and is perfect for very cold climates. The oven is part of a mass of brickwork intended to keep the house well-heated. The fire from the fireplace or stove chamber enters a chimney that winds around the oven on at least three sides, heating the brick from the outside. By the time the draft from the fire leaves the building, it has relinquished all its heat into the brick mass and passes from the building cold.
Our costal Northern California climate is cool but not so cold that we need to use the fireplace all year. We made our hearth oven part of the fireplace, but separate from it so that they can be used independently. They share a common chimney, which also vents the kitchen stoves.
To tell the whole story would take another book, but if you are thinking of going this route, here are some things to consider.
WOOD
Well-seasoned hardwood burns hotter and requires less fussing. Sometimes hardwood mills will give mill ends free for the hauling. Once cut, the wood must cure for at least six months to a year so it will burn hot and clean.
STEAM
We finally settled on a system that pipes (stainless steel pipes! Copper pipe threw blue flakes onto the bread) tap water along the sides of the oven so that it drips down the masonry, turning into steam. A simpler method that also worked was to fill a punctured loaf pan with boiling water, letting it drip onto the hearth. We abandoned that because it was hazardous to the bakers and wasted space.
HEAT
It takes a little while to learn how to get the heat just right at the moment the bread is ready to load. We fire the oven slowly for a couple of hours, then keep the temperature at 1000°F for another hour. After that, shut down the oven for half an hour to even out the heat before the bread is loaded. By then the heat is about 550°F, which is just right. After loading and steaming, the temperature is about 400°F, or a little higher. A thermometer (pyrometer) in the ceiling of the oven makes gauging this easier.
EQUIPMENT
Once the oven has been fired, it is brilliantly self-cleaned except for a few ashes that can easily be mopped out using a long-handled mop and clear water—and care to prevent