Marlene

Thanks Kerry! We did pizza in the oven, and taking a suggestion from one of my members, it went much better. Taking Ron's suggestion to get the stones up off the oven floor, we improvised by using the rack that came with the oven and laying that on the floor, then laying the two stones on top of the rack. The oven was heated to 600 degrees. This was much much better. And each pizza took about 4 minutes. I did notice that since the stones were of different thickness, one pizza over the other cooked faster on the bottom. Just another reason to get a full rectangular stone for this. Don's pizza. Sort of a kitchen sink pizza. Salami, ham, bacon, jalepenos, red peppers and onion. He wanted more cheese. Oops, next time. Ryan's usual. Green peppers, onion, red peppers and jalepenos and pineapple. My bacon and pepperoni. Apparently it had all the cheese that Don wanted. Crust underneath A slight char, but not bad at all. I used the neopolitana dough from American Pie. I liked it, and it's easy to work with. But my fallback dough is still the dough from Ratio. I was pretty happy with this over all. But have I mentioned that making pizza, leaves one's kitchen as a total disaster area? I had planned to make more bread dough up for tomorrow, but they are calling for thunderstorms all day. I may try bread again this week, but then I may wait until we get on the hunt for a proper grate and rectangular stone for this. But so far, I'm feeling a lot happier about this than I was with the bread this morning!

That's what I was thinking, Kerry. Where is the Oakville Pottery Supply? I could have don stop by there this week.

This is my new wood fired oven The first bread experimentAs a first experiment, this was both a success and a failure. I made bread in the oven today. We heated the oven to 600 and then let the temperature fall back to around 450. I had two separate baking stones in, one round and one square. I have already determined I need one long rectangular stone I think. Especially for bread. Anyway, a bad shot of the bread baking. I put a small pan of water in the oven and I misted the loaves and the walls with water when I put them in You can see where the smaller loaf was off the edge of the stone and came in contact with the floor. It burnt fairly quickly. Out of the oven. The one on the right is almost perfect, the one on the left I had to take out before it was cooked as the bottom was burnt so badly As in this badly The one on the right fared somewhat better, as it got a bit charred, but I think it's edible. About halfway through baking, I put a second stone under this, a cool one so the top could finish cooking without burning the bottom anymore. I got a pretty decent oven spring, and a beautiful blistered crust that comes from a cold rise in the fridge overnight. So, I'm not sure how to handle the burning on the bottom. For sure, a one piece rectangular stone, probably thicker than the stones I have now. I cant use a cold stone or the bread will stick to it. I could perhaps turn the oven down even further to 350 maybe. But for pizza? This could be interesting. Flour or cornmeal on the peel doesn't help because the flour on the bottom of the bread or pizza is going to burn almost immediately. BUT, I need flour or cornmeal on the peel to ensure that the pizza or bread slides off the peel easily. I'm not quite sure yet, but it will be fun experimenting. If the weather holds, we'll be doing pizza tonight.

Funny I was just wondering the same thing - being that I want to start baking some stuff in a Big Green Egg. Did you get an EGG for home, Kerry? My wood fired pizza oven will be arriving this morning, hence the question.

I have a question. If one is using a wood fired oven for bread, and making say baguettes or french loaves, would you still use steam and how would accomplish that in such an oven?

I have, and it works beautifully.

Readily available to the UK domestic kitchen from Lakeland. Different sizes of pre-cut circles and squares as well as rectangles ... They do ship abroad, but not exactly cheaply, I'm afraid. In Canada, you can get flat parchement sheets and rounds from Golda's Kitchen, and in the US, from King Arthur flour. These are standard in my kitchen.

Kerry, how do you store that much garlic for the year?

That's what my crust looked like, only worse. Why can't you get the egg really hot?

Paring knife, chef's knife, bread knife are the three most used knives in my arsenal. I use my paring knife on a daily basis.

I don't, but it does look interesting!

I'm thinking of getting this one

We're doing a whole chicken on the rotisserie on the gas grill. Have done a couple of the Egg, and love them, but we haven't test driven the new grill yet in terms of the rotisserie. And for the first time, I used a rub.

We looked at the steel kegs as well. I think it might cool down a bit faster but not much. This is were the Prmo Oval XL really shines with its divided firebox for searing then imediate indirect cooking.

They do, and we've checked most of them. Problem is we have the XL egg and most of these places stock stuff for the large Egg and down. We have stuff on order where we bought the egg, but all the stuff for the XL egg has been backordered for weeks in all places!

We love our BGE, and it excels at so many things. However, in order for it to excel, it does it's best work using indirect heat and for that you really do need a platesetter. We're still waiting on ours. However, we've done ribs, a roast chicken and steaks that were second to none. The pizza wasn't so successful. But we're working on that!

No, it's an issue with the Eggs, period. There is another ceramic cooker, the Primo which has the divided firebox. We almost bought that one, but went with an Egg instead. The Egg has something called a platesetter, which is used to control indirect cooking. Ours is on backorder, and it's been a problem not to have it. We did pizza on our Egg last week, and totally burnt the bottom. I know they have small platesetters, but I don't know if it is small enough for the Mini. It occurs to me that if they don't have a diffuser for the Mini, a diffuser such as one for a gas stove might work, and I think it would be small enough.

My convection microwave sits in a cabinet with no doors. It's never been a problem. And the grill at the top is for decoration basically.

I do have one and I love it!

Keller's Boeuf Bourguignon. While I was in the middle of trying to sell my house. Catering our annual Christmas party for 100 myself, while still trying to be a corporate wife and mingle.

I have a gas infrared broiler in my Dacor oven. It works really really well, but the Dacor's are pricey. I think it's pretty hard to go wrong with a kitchenaid oven

Prawncrackers, that dauphonaise is beautiful! Care to share the recipe? kim, your spaghetti is calling to me. Maybe for dinner tomorrow.

Saltines with peanut butter or butter. Of course as soon as I read Anna's 'cracker" and dividend's "peanut butter", I wanted some. No saltines in the house so I'm substituting Carrs cracked pepper water crackers. It's not the same. Zing's Cheese triangles are good for a nibble as well.

I'm just going to say that it's a little more complicated than this. I'll stick to large cuts right now, like say a prime rib, rather than the small cuts of steaks, etc that only need really maybe 5 minutes of resting. So, it depends on how you're cooking your Prime rib, which is what I'll use for my example. If you're cooking regular 325 roasting convection or not, then 20 - 30 minutes is about right. however, if you're doing high heat, turn oven off, or sear then low heat, the meat needs very little resting, say 10 minutes, as it is basically resting during the low heat cooking period. I have checked and the meat doesn't cook up much more after either of those methods after removing from the oven. So it depends on your method. Poultry needs less resting than beef for example, as does pork.

If you go with an enamelled cast iron like Le Creuset, you'll be fine.