Pizza Workshop For Kids

Do you have a kid who would like to learn how to make pizza and flat breads in a wood-fired oven? If yes, then join us at the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine on July 30 and 31. I'll be showing the young ones how to get their hands in the dough and then prepare superlative pizzas.

Fire On Side

When making pizza, consider keeping the fire on the side of the oven rather than in the back.
The advantage is your ability to see the area of the pizza closest to the fire, and that's where it will first begin to burn, but just before that happens, you can give it a spin. It is simply easier to monitor the bake with the fire on the side. With the fire in the back of the oven, often the pizza will begin to burn, and you may not see it happening.

Earth Oven Workshop

Join Kendra Michaud and me for an all day workshop this July on earth oven construction and build a real oven. For indoors or outdoors, you'll learn how to construct a very low-cost oven that's ideal for bread baking at home. No expertise is required, but just the desire to watch dough transformed in front of your eyes in an oven you've actually made yourself. You'll learn about firebrick, clay/sand ratios, mud, insulation, stucco, weatherproofing and baking mysteries. If time permits and the mud behaves, we hope to actually make a flat bread in our new oven at the end of the day.
The workshop oven will be constructed on a pallet that will fit on the bed of someone's pickup truck. Who gets the oven will be decided at the workshop.

I'll also be teaching a pizza making workshop for kids

Build It Big Enough

Should be big enough

If you're primarily doing flat breads and pizzas than your oven will probably need to be larger than it would have been if your main focus were raised loaves. The reason being that flat breads and pizzas do best if you're maintaining a fire in the oven while they bake, and a fire takes up quite a bit of space. You'll need lots of room to maneuver your pizzas around to get them to bake evenly.

Too small
(But the pizza does look great)

First Fire

Here's a photo of an oven I just completed at my home. The interior is brick with angle iron supports. It's insulated with perlite, and the exterior is coated with surface bonding cement, also know as structural skin. I am quite confident the oven will be watertight without a roof.
Now we'll see how it performs.

The Case Of The Missing Blue Stone

In this photo, you can see the small space where the blue stone belongs. When my son and I go to France this June, we'll be on the lookout.

How's this for an unspeakably beautiful oven

Here's an email I received today. If you have any information about the BLUE STONE, please get in touch with Marcus Flynn: pyromasse@gmail.com

Hello,
My name is Marcus Flynn and I am a builder of Masonry stoves, and on
occasion ovens, and I eat bread regularly.

There is an English man in Brittany who is asking me some questions
about an oven he has just aquired with a property.
In the second image of the oven detailed here
http://www.pyromasse.ca/ovensfr.html there are three large dark brick
visible at the back of the bake chambe ( which is cold )The owner told me
that these brick would change colour when the oven was at opporating
temperature. I took little notice at the time. Now though the man in
Brittany is asking me about a special stone that fits into a nich in the
ovens facing just below the avaloire, and changes colour when the oven is
hot enough ( for what ??? ) The stone has been lost but old people have told
him that it is called Pierre Bleue ( blue stone ) and that it comes from
another area of france.????

Do you know anythig about this stone ? Or do you know the supreeme
athoraty on French Ovens ? who I can ask. I have heard about it only on the
two occasions mentioned above, both of which are more or less in the same
location.

Flavor

If your breads are tasting bland, there's no need to add sugar, sesame seeds, garlic, onions or molasses to your basic ingredients to improve the flavor. And your basic ingredients would be starter, flour, salt and water. Really, that's all you'll ever need. But, to get maximum flavor, you must bake the loaf until the crust becomes dark and burnished. There can be an amazing amount of flavor in the crust, and don't be afraid about burning the loaf. A loaf that is truly burnt can be salvaged by some scraping, but an under cooked loaf is best left for the raccoons. The photo is from Bread Under Cover.