Tuesday, April 30, 2013



May Day Guiness Loaf

There was some leftover Stout after my wife made Guiness Beef Pies for dinner last evening. It was a good excuse to use the remainder for making bread. For this bake, I used my basic white recipe which is 70% hydration. The Poolish was made last night with 300g of flour. Waiting for it to cool down to eat with some butter and coffee for afternoon tea.

Thursday, January 03, 2013

 A little bit of automation to keep the fire going while I was busy preparing the dough for the Pizza
 Fire going strong.
 6 balls of Pizza dough resting before they are shaped
Pizza cooking in the beehive. The intense heat cooked the Pizza in minutes.


Wood Fired Oven Pizza

The recent weather was possibly the worst time to have an outdoor party and yet we threw caution to the wind and just went ahead with the plan to make pizzas in our wood fired beehive oven. Two days earlier, I had checked the weather forecast for the week and it was supposed to rain every day of the week.

The day before the party, I came home drenched as I was caught in a very heavy downpour. The heavy drenching made me confident that the following day would be dry enough for lighting up my oven. (It turned out eventually that that day was the only dry day in the week.)

I decided not to bake any bread as I wanted to focus on the Pizza. I made some improvements in my loading of the Pizza using a flat metal sheet. The Pizza was assembled on this sheet which can then be transported with ease. The Pizza attempt was a great success as our guests finished off all the 6 Pizzas.


 Staple Walnut Bread 1kg All purpose flour 800g Water 3 tsp salt 3 tsp yeast Bowl of walnuts Makes two large loaves Mix dry ingredients and ...