Anna’s Wood Fired Oven Blog

We started the year stumbling upon a great pizza…  Peter wanted to try a new dough recipe and invited his buddy Chris over for a taste.  As it often happens, Chris brought a garnish to experiment with and we had one of our own (which actually was the extra stuffing that was left over from the ravioli Peter had made earlier).  Try them both and decide which one you like best.

The Dough

Is an easy variation of our Neapolitan Pizza Dough and it makes for a crispier pie that holds up nicely  to heavier garnishes.  The variation is this:  Add 1 cup of flour to the recipe, so 5 1/2 cups of flour instead of just 4 1/2 cups.

Fennel, Mozzarella, and Fontina Garnish

We used the dish Chris brought and made this white pizza… loved it!

3 heads of fennel, quartered

1 clove of garlic, sliced thin

1 cup of vermouth or white wine

1/4 stick of butter

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 F.  Put fennel, garlic, vermouth, and butter in a metal pan and place in the oven.  Once the butter is melted, take the pan out to baste the fennel, then back in the oven to bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until fennel is tender.  Let the dish cool.

Prepare the pizza pie and garnish with some of the baked fennel, sprinkling cut mozzarella and fontina cheeses on top.  Slide pizza in the wood fired oven, bake for one and one half minute, rotate, and finish baking.

Slide pizza out of the oven and before serving, add some finely chopped parsley, grated parmesan cheese and optional, a little olive oil.

Potato,  Gruyere, and Truffle Butter Garnish

Boil 3 medium potatoes in salted water.

Discard the water and pass the boiled potatoes through a ricer while still hot or mash them well. Add 1 tablespoon of truffle butter and 1/3 cup shredded gruyere cheese to the mashed potatoes and stir until melted.

Prepare the pizza pie and garnish with mozzarella cheese cut into cubes and then add a little bit of this potato mixture.  Slide pizza in the wood fired oven that has been pre-heated to 650F  bake for about one and a half minute, rotate pizza and finish baking.  This is another “white” pizza (without tomato sauce) that we really, really loved.  Great as an appetizer.

Buon appetito!

A heartfelt thank you to all our friends and customers who share our passion for wood fired cooking and have helped make this year a success!

Assisting a customer in finding the right pizza oven for their needs and then getting amazing feedback of how much fun they are having is something I never get tired of… Michael C. from Texas sent a great description of a party around his oven. In his own words…

Anna,

Had another party this past weekend. It was unreal. Although it was 40 degrees, folks still wanted to be outside. We had tons of food, still people were raving about the pizza. I had custom orders; we sent some folks home with to-go boxes. I ended up making 18 pies during a 5-hour period along with some wonderful bruschetta topped with home-made pesto and sundried tomatoes. The constant comments were “this is so cool; it’s the neatest thing anyone has done around here… Everyone has an outdoor kitchen with a grill and fireplace… but you have this cool pizza oven.”

Yesterday we had some friends over and Robin (her mom is Italian) got into the act and was so happy rolling the dough, topping the pizza, and cooking it. We sent her home with the pizza for her daughter. And, by the way, my 13-year old daughter is the one who rolls out the dough in my household… We have a system down. She rolls, configures, sprinkles some corn meal and flour on the peel, and places the pizza pie on the peel. I par-bake four pies, set them aside on flour and corn meal, and when we have 4 done, we garnish them and place them back in the oven. And then we do it over again. My daughter loves it!

I like Michael’s par-baking technique for saving time when feeding a large gathering of guests. I look forward to more experiments in gourmet, home baked food in the coming year.

As the old year is making way for a fresh new beginning, we gratefully share our blessings with those in needs via non profit organizations that help children and families around the world.

These are our favorites, because they focus on providing assistance in a very personal and direct way. Children Incorporated, assisting children of all races and creeds. Heifer.org giving livestock and training, it helps families improve their nutrition and generate income in sustainable ways. Sriramfoundation.org welcoming abandoned children into a stable, loving family environment.

Wishing you all a happy new year around the oven!

Thanksgiving is around the corner and if you are planning to bake your holiday turkey in the wood fired oven for the first time ever, you may increase your confidence by baking a chicken as a test… and here’s a quick recipe that Chris, our neighbor and friend, has shared with us many times when we fire up our oven.

Chicken a la Chris

Rinse and pat dry the chicken. Sprinkle the inside with 1/2 tablespoon sea salt and rub the outside with the same amount. Place the chicken in a dutch oven casserole and let it reach room temperature. Chop some rosemary, squeeze 1 lemon, mix in a bowl together with 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Use 1/2 of this mixture on the inside of the chicken and pour the rest on the outside. Put the cover on the casserole and slide it in the wood fired oven at about 450 to 500 degrees F and bake it for about 45 minutes. (Check after 30 minutes.)

Check the internal temperature of the chicken, when it has reached 150 degrees F. take the casserole top off to let the chicken brown nicely. Bake for another 10 to 15 minutes. Serve with your favorite side dish… and lick your fingers!

Once you have tried your hand with the chicken, check out our recipe for Holiday Turkey and invite friends and family over for a memorable meal.

The New York Times featured a story about the Philo apple farm in northern California run by the folks who founded French Laundry, and I was feeling the pangs of nostalgia for farm life again. One day we will take a road trip up to Anderson Valley, but in the meantime I tried their Ginger-Apple Upside Down Cake and absolutely loved it! I had gone by a friend’s house that has a fabulous apple tree and harvested a basket full, so it was a timely find. Isn’t the color just yummy?

Buon appetito!

Even in California the fall is showing off its first chill and some rain. It pays off to have a good stack of dry wood saved, especially as the holidays are approaching and there’s a lot of baking to do. And that’s the key to heating up the oven properly: a nice stack of dry hardwood. What is hardwood? See the list here for the most common kinds of hardwood.

Place the wood pieces crosswise, with the smaller pieces on the bottom, in the middle of the oven floor. You will need about 10 or so, smaller pieces of split wood and one or two larger ones. Place a non-toxic fire starter cube on the bottom of the stack and light it.

Keep the fire burning, adding about another 5 split logs as it burns. After about one hour the fire is down to mostly ashes and coals. Now is the time to push the fire, or what is left of it, to the left or right side of the oven.

Wait about 10 minutes, and then brush (with a natural bristle brush) the remaining ashes off the floor to the side. Take a temperature read with your infrared laser thermometer and you can start cooking. You can bake your pizza right on the oven floor or you can roast meats, fish, vegetables in pans, sliding them into the oven.

If you are planning to roast a turkey for the holidays, you will need to make sure you have given the oven an opportunity to accumulate an extra amount of indirect heat inside the walls and floor. So let that fire burn for an extra 15 to 20 minutes beyond the hour.

You can then scoop out the embers from the oven and place the meat inside to slowly roast with the oven door closed.

Buon appetito!

All our outdoor activity stopped for a long week as heat and forest fires raged and a huge smoke cloud enveloped our area. It felt like living next to a vulcano in eruption, everything was covered in ashes. Eventually the smoke cleared and we welcomed the return of the ocean breezes, visited our garden to harvest tomatoes and basil. With all that bounty Peter made lots of tomato sauce and pesto.

We had been yearning for a parmigiana di melanzane (eggplant parmesan) so we slid the grill over the coals in the oven and decided to throw in some portobella mushroom al pesto while we waited for the parmigiana to fully bake. Our neighbors Jules and Ocean sniffed the aroma, dropped by and had a bite… Life was good in our neighborhood! And the recipes easy as one, two, three… But then we had the advantage of home-made sauces, of course

Grilling the eggplant instead of deep frying it makes the parmigiana much lighter, while retaining all the flavor. In a metal pan, spoon some tomato sauce on the bottom and then layer grilled eggplant, mozzarella cheese, a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, and basil. Spoon some more tomato sauce and repeat the layering, finishing off with a good sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Slide in your wood fired oven that is about 450 to 400 degrees or so. It will be baked to bubbly perfection in about 20 to 30 minutes.

The great thing about this dish is that it accumulates good taste if you leave it in the fridge overnight. Keep this in mind if you are preparing ahead for a party.

While you wait… brush both sides of a portobella mushroom (use the cap only) with pesto sauce. Grill both sides, top side last. Lastly, add a slice of Provolone cheese and let it melt. Slice a good, rustic Italian bun and brush with olive oil. Grill the bread. Assemble mushroom in the bun to taste as you would a burger (but please hold the mayo, ketchup, mustard!). We were content using a slice of tomato and lettuce, to allow the burst of pesto flavor.

When grilling the mushrooms and the eggplant, go easy on the coals, as they only need medium heat to cook. In other words, don’t pile the coals high or too hot under the grill.

Fun thing about being outdoors and it doesn’t matter if your fingers get all sticky and things get out of hand… it’s an easy clean-up.

Buon appetito!

Our friend Mike had his birthday party over the weekend and we brought one of our favorite appetizers. I like this recipe because it is fast and everyone just loves the wood fired flavor and look of this dish.

There will be times when you are not going to use your wood fired oven for a party in your house, because you just want to make something quick and delicious to bring to a friend’s home or a family gathering somewhere else.

In this case you don’t need to build up a lot of heat in the oven. I just wanted to quickly grill some vegetables, so Peter built a small fire while I prepared the marinating sauce and cut the vegies. In about 30 minutes, the fire was reduced to a nice bed of hot coals and I placed a grill over it.

Over the grill (with legs) I placed a metal tray with holes I got at William Sonoma (see photo below). It comes handy when you grill mushrooms, for example, because they all stay in one place and are easy to handle.

You can use any vegetables you like and/or have available. Onions and eggplants are particularly good.

3 or 4 small onions

2 medium zucchini

3 small Italian eggplants

1 green or red bell pepper

15 white mushrooms

Marinating Sauce

2 tbs fresh thyme leaves

1 tbs fresh sage, chopped

1 tbs dry oregano

3 tbs red balsamic vinegar

8 tbs olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

Cut the vegetables lengthwise, so it is easier to grill them. Set them aside. Mix the salt and the vinegar in a bowl, adding all the chopped up herbs. Then add the olive oil.

Place the grill with legs inside the oven on top of the bed of coals. Slide the metal tray with the vegetables on top of the grill. Check at intervals of 4-5 minutes or so, turning when done. Keep the metal door of the oven up against the arch so that it keeps the heat inside the oven, but still leaves the air in.

When the vegetables are done, pour the marinating sauce over them while still hot. Place in a nice plate, garnish, and you are ready to party!

Buon appetito!

It is so much fun to harvest in the garden early on a summer morning! Today I got lots of tomatoes and they look beautiful! Decided to combine my favorite comforting flavors: tomato-potato-bread crumbs. Try this in your wood fired oven or in your conventional oven (in this case just add 10-15 minutes to the cooking time).

Pomodori al forno

6 medium tomatoes, ripe but firm

2 russet potatoes

1 cup of olive oil + 2 tablespoons

1/2 cup bread crumbs

2 teaspoons dry oregano

Salt and pepper to taste

Cube the potatoes and boil them in salted water. When they are done, mashed the potatoes with a fork. Set aside.

With a sharp knife cut off the top of the tomato. Holding the tomato in the cup of one hand, gently scoop out the pulp, making sure not to tear the tomato. Keep the pulp and juice, you will use it later.

Ok, so I am partial to making my own bread crumbs. This may be because I just can’t trow away good bread, so I always keep some handy in the fridge drawer, stored in a paper bag. Baguettes are the best for this sort of thing. Break the hardened bread in pieces and process in a food processor. The crumbs will not be uniform size and some will be a bit larger, which is good.

Place the bread crumbs in a bowl and add about 8 tablespoons of the tomato juice and pulp you set aside. Mix in the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the 2 teaspoons of dry oregano, and salt and pepper to taste. Then add the mashed potatoes and mix. Scoop this mixture into each tomato.

Place the tomatoes snugly either in two loaf pans or other metal pan. Add the olive oil so that it comes up about 1/2 inch. Baste the tomatoes with some of the olive oil.

Bake in a 300 degrees F oven for 20 minutes. Take out and baste the tomatoes with the olive oil in the pan. Return to the oven for another 20 minutes.

Mmmmh… so good with some aged goat cheese or pecorino!

Buon appetito.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July and there’s going to be a whole lot of cooking!!! It is so nice to spend the day outdoors, by the wood fired oven, especially when the weather offers a perfect summer dazzle.

If you are used to a barbeque, you should definitely try cooking in a wood fired oven and taste a most beloved Italian dish: arrosto misto or mixed roast, where different choices of seasonal meat and game are grilled or roasted together, the fire burning the fat to a nice crisp, yet leaving the meat tender. You can for example use pieces of chicken (with the skin), rabbit, pork, beef , and pork sausage.

Use a grill on a stand inside the wood fired oven or a metal pan. Rub a bit of olive oil, and a generous amount of salt and your favorite herbs on the meat, such as rosemary, thyme, sage, laurel, oregano. Place the slower cooking meats in the oven first and then add the ones that cook faster. If you are using a metal pan add a bit more olive oil in the pan, along with more herbs, and optional, juice of one lemon or 1/4 cup white wine.

My favorite at this time of year is a wood-fired rustic cherry galette, and a friend is bringing some amazing Bing cherries so that will definitely be on the menu. Here’s the recipe, enjoy and make sure you take time to slow down and appreciate the company of family and friends.

Wood-fired Rustic Cherry Galette

Pasta frolla or pâte sucrée

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 ounces (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2 large egg yolks

2 to 4 tablespoons cold heavy cream

Using a food processor, pulse flour, sugar, and salt briefly, about 4 times. Cut the butter sticks in half lenghtwise, turn to the side and cut again lengthwise, then cut in small pieces. I add the butter pieces gradually in three phases, pulsing once in between, so that they are distributed evenly before I pulse everything for 10 seconds.

Lightly beat the yolks and add them with the machine running. Gradually pour in the cream, but the very careful to process only until the dough comes together, at the max. for 30 seconds. Pat dough into a disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days, or freeze up to 1 month.

Cherry Filling

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup unsalted almonds, toasted and cooled

4-5 green cardamom pods, shelled and seeds removed

1 pinch of ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 pounds sweet cherries, such as Bing, pitted

2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk

1 tablespoon heavy cream

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured parchment to a 16 inch long oval (about 1/4 inch thick). Transfer dough and parchment to a baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Place the cardamom seeds in a mortar and grind them a bit.

Process the 1/4 cup sugar, the toasted almonds, the cardamom, nutmeg, and salt in food processor. Combine this mix with the cherries. A note of caution when pitting the cherries: use gloves or you will look like the an ax murderer for the day, the juice of the cherries can really stain your hands, as I found out the hard way.

Preheat the oven at 375 degrees F. Spoon the cherry mix over the dough, leaving a 2-inch border. Dot with butter. Very gently fold the edges inward, if for some reason the dough breaks a little when folding, gently pat it close again. Refrigerate for 30 minutes until cold.

Whisk the cream with the yolk and brush the edges. Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons (or to taste) of sugar (I like brown sugar) on top. Slide in a wood fired oven that is cooling down and registering about 400 or 375 degrees F. Leave the door open if you have left the embers inside the oven. Close the door if you are using indirect heat, meaning that you have scooped the embers out of the oven. Check the galette after 20 minutes and if you think it is getting too golden too soon, then cover it lightly with tin foil. Bake for a total of about 30 to 45 minutes.

Buon appetito and enjoy your summer!

We’ve had such a spell of wonderful weather here in Los Angeles… the cool ocean breeze tempering the warm sun, plants blooming everywhere… enough to make one forget that earthquakes and traffic ever existed! Our peach tree yielded an abundant and welcomed harvest, and I kept making peach cobblers as fast as family and friends could eat them. Fruit desserts come out really nice in the wood fired oven and I love using up the lower temperatures, when the oven is starting to cool down (350 F).

I think that the charm of cooking in a wood burning oven is that life slows down, just like it does when you are on a vacation. I leisurely start the fire, right in the middle of the oven floor. Humming contentedly while I enjoy the beauty of the fire and its crackling sound, I gather all my ingredients and start preparing my dishes. In the meantime, the oven is absorbing a great deal of heat into its walls and floor, and this heat will be released slowly over a period of about 6 hours.

When the fire has died down to coal and embers, after about one hour, I sweep the embers with a long-handled ash stick to the right (or left) side of the oven, and then I wait 10 minutes before I use a natural bristle brush to sweep the remaining bit of ashes from the floor. The oven is now ready and usually registering about 750F. At this point I have a choice: I can either bake some pizza or focaccia or wait for the oven to cool down further.

Pizza is traditionally cooked by adding a small piece of wood onto the pile of embers. This way, the extra heat generated by the small flame will travel in a circular way from the side of the oven to the dome and down again onto the oven floor. Pizza will bake in 3 minutes, and it will absorb a little bit of heat from the floor, but by keeping that small flame you will replenish the heat balance immediately between pizzas and you could continue to bake forever until you drop or until your one hundred guests just cannot eat one more slice! Check out the pizza recipes and make your own dough from scratch.

For most dishes like roast meat, chicken, turkey, etc. I wait until the temperature is about 500F. If it is Thanksgiving and there’s a lot a lot of cooking happening, then I let the oven heat up a bit longer in the beginning by adding a little more wood and extending the firing up time to one hour and a half. This way I know there will be a lot of retained heat in the walls and floors.

I bake bread at 500F and in this case, I will scoop out all the embers and coals and will close the opening tight with the metal door for the 30 minutes or so it takes to bake. Mmm… you should always wait one hour before you break your freshly baked bread and eat it… but I overlook that rule so many times. The aroma wafts into my nostrils and overpowers my mind, what can I say. Baking bread in a neighborhood is like making popcorn in an office, everyone will know, and your friends will suddenly knock at your door, all smiles.

I bake pasta dishes, like lasagna, at 450F. Vegetable dishes come out fabulous too, with a nice smokey flavor. Fish and lobster can be grilled over the coals inside the oven or placed on a bakeware dish along with their condiments.

And lastly, at 350F the time comes for the desserts… as I mentioned, I have been doing a lot of peach cobblers and I am thinking of doing my famous cherry galette soon. The sugar in the fruit browns and bubbles to perfection in the wood-fired oven!

Well, actually there is still something I will put in the oven: a pot of beans to slowly, very slowly cook over 3 hours as the ovens gradually cools down from about 300F. See the recipe, click here.

Buon appetito!

As spring vegetables make their appearance here in California, I get excited about fennel. It is so versatile in the wood fired oven, with a lovely anise flavor that improves and makes more interesting a lot of dishes. It is also great on its own. (By the way, in ancient Greek fennel was called marathon, and some sources point to the fact that the area where the great battle of Marathon took place was once covered with fennel plants.)

Here’s a great recipe using fennel, or finocchio, as it is called in Italy.

Black Cod and Fennel al Forno

Serves 4

1 lb Black Cod filet, cleaned, leave the skin on one side

1/2 fennel bulb, sliced thin

3 tablespoons of olive oil

1 handful of fresh or dry rosemary

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Mix the oil with the sliced fennel, olive oil and spices. Marinate the fish in this mix of oil and spices for 30 minutes.

Two ways you can cook this dish in a hot wood fired oven:

• Once the fire you built is down to coals and embers, scoop these towards the front of your oven and place a freestanding grill over the coals. Wait 5 minutes until the grill is hot, then place the marinated cod on it with the skin side down. Fish will be done in about 10 minutes or so.
• If you don’t have a freestanding grill, use a baking dish. Push the coals and embers to the left or right side of the oven and then wait until the oven temperature registers around 500 degrees F. Place the dish at some distance from the embers. The fish will be done in 10-15 minutes.

Serve with a fresh endive and tomato salad.

By the way, you can enhance the food you cook in your wood-burning oven by using different kinds of woods. By now you know to use only hardwood that is nice and dry. This provides the highest BTU (British Termal Units, a way to measure the amount of heat) and also will keep your oven floor free from resins and other trouble.

So for cooking fish try using alder, maple, apricot, peach, plum, nectarine, almond because they bring out the best flavors in your seafood.

Buon appetito!