Anna’s Wood Fired Oven Blog

As Francis Mallmann puts it, “Cooking with wood fire is like going on a first date.  It is something you look forward to with great anticipation and a little anxiety.”

Perfect spot for a wood fired party

If you are like me, you will have a little bit of anxiety before entertaining, mostly to make sure everything runs smoothly upon the arrival of your guests and a the same time you don’t want to spend all your time next to the oven (well, maybe you do…), but you want to sit down and enjoy your friends.  Well, that’s the beauty of cooking in your wood fired oven:  your typical dish schedule – appetizer, main dish, side dish, dessert – works perfectly well with the high – medium – low heating cycle of your oven.  And the fact that simple recipes work best in the oven anyway, allows you to pick recipes that can be prepared ahead of time and that require minimum handling in the outdoor kitchen.

Although a wood fired oven doesn’t have a dial on it where you can adjust the temperature on and off, you will enjoy a very nice constant radiating heat as you cook, which is ideal for any dish, especially meat.  And once the wood fired oven is heated thoroughly it will stay hot until the next day.

It is important to keep a good stash of dry hardwood to make starting the fire really easy and enhance the taste of the food you cook.  Use Peter’s method of firing up the oven, so that you have a uniformly hot oven with a minimum amount of wood for a maximum amount of cooking time.

Appetizers are a wonderful way of greeting your friends and they keep everyone happy while other things are baking in the oven.  They are a great fit for the initially hot oven as it is easy to find recipes that can be baked at 650-600 degrees F, floor temperature.  Best way of measuring temperature inside the oven is by using a hand-held infrared thermometer and point it at the oven floor. (We include this thermometer in each oven kit, and it is also available in our online store.)

My favorite appetizers are oven made pizzarollis, and flat breads because they pair well with cheeses, or prosciutto and figs, and such fun starters.  Alternatively, if I am harvesting cherry tomatoes in the garden, I grill them quickly or place them in a cast iron skillet whole, with a bit of olive oil, close to the entrance of the oven, until they are burnished on the outside and release all their sweetness on the inside.  Then I smash them slightly with a fork and mix them with olive oil, a little bit of crushed fresh garlic, basil, salt, and spoon this goodness over a grilled slice of Italian bread, for a quick bruschetta, served along with local cheese.  To grill the bread slices, you can place them on directly on the hot oven floor or on a hot grill, and use tongs or a fork to turn.

Seizing up the appetizer

As the oven cools a little, it’s time for the main dishes. Leaving the door open will bring the temperature in the oven down to 550-500 degrees F (floor temperature) and this is ideal for  a chicken, or a lamb, or a small roast that you’ve prepared ahead of time in a metal pan.  Place a small piece of wood on top of the bed of coals that you moved to the left or right side of the oven, and slide the pan in, opposite side from the coals.  The meat will sear very nicely  as the dome of the oven reflects heat all around it, and will acquire a crispy outside flavored with the smoke of the fire. You can cover the meat loosely with foil either at the beginning or the end of the cooking cycle to brown the meat. (When using a recipe written for a regular oven, just add about a hundred degrees and reduce the cooking time to about a third.)

Fish I usually place on a oven proof dish and keep it closer to the door, since it doesn’t require high temperature.  Or  wait until the oven is at about 450 degrees F if you want to bake a tender fish filet.  It’s fun to grill a lobster, halved, on a grill placed close to the opening and with the coals raked under it.

Along with the main dish, you can fit a few pans with side dishes, such as potatoes, mushrooms, artichokes which all acquire a great smoky taste in the wood burning oven.  Or slide in an eggplant parmesan that your assembled the day before.

And lastly... dessert

Once you’ve taken out the main dish and the side dishes, the oven is ready for cooking a dessert.  Something simple with lots of butter and sugar… since these caramelize  deliciously in the pizza oven!  Your guests will beg you to invite them again.

Buon appetito from Los Angeles Ovenworks!

It’s funny how you can repeat a process for years and then suddenly your are hit with the “Aha!” moment.  Our insight into firing up our pizza oven came when Peter decided to improve his box fire construction by placing three extra pieces of wood along the perimeter.  Let me explain…

Use hardwood to fire your pizza oven

You’ve made your pizza dough or prepared your chicken and eagerly walk over to the oven to fire it up.  You have your good stash of very dry, split hardwood set aside and you pick out about 7 choice pieces, about 2.5 to 3″ wide and 15 to 20″ long.

Now try Peter’s method: Place three logs in each corner of the pizza oven, close to the walls, (see photo A.) Then build a box fire in the middle of the oven floor  by alternating two logs diagonally one way and  two logs the other way on top, repeat (see photo B.).  Put a piece non-toxic fire starter under the wood and light the fire .

A good thing to do when the fire is starting up, is to lean the metal door outside on the arch (see photo C.), this way the initial smoke is channeled up the vent.  It will soon be very hot in your oven and the smoke will naturally flow upward into the chimney.  Part of Peter’s method at this point is to sit back and relax,  listening to the fire… his way of celebrating the upcoming feast, sort of the quiet before the storm of cooking. The pizza dough that he prepared the day before and kept in the fridge overnight, is now next to the oven,  rising and ready to shape into pies.

Photo A. Place logs around the sides of the oven.

You will notice that the wood in the middle ignites first and then the heat in the oven will ignite the split wood pieces around the perimeter and this will create a wonderful radiant heat all around the floor and the walls.  Your wood fired oven will absorb this heat created by the fire burning out in the next hour and then the oven will slowly release this accumulated heat for many hours of cooking cycle, gradually cooling off.

When the fire will have burnt down you can move the coals and ashes with your ash stick either to the right side or the left side of the oven.  (If you are planning to bake pizza, then place a small wood piece onto the coals to keep a small flame throughout the pizza making process.) Check the temperature with your handheld laser thermometer provided in your Los Angeles Ovenworks’ kit.  Start your cooking feast!

You can have a lot of fun experimenting with different woods:

Alder: Imparts a light flavor that works well with fish and poultry.
Apple and pear: Nice and subtle flavor, use with pork and game.
Apricot, Plum, Peach, Nectarine: Flavor is milder and sweeter than hickory.

Photo B. Box fire.

Hickory: The most famous smoking hardwoods, imparts a strong, hearty flavor to meats, used mostly for pork shoulders and ribs.
Maple: Mellow smoke fragrance traditionally used for poultry, pork and seafood.
Mesquite: Produces a very hot flame perfect for grilling steaks.
Pecan: Sweet and mild with a flavor similar to hickory, but not as strong.
Oak: Favorite wood of Europe, strong but not overpowering. Used for beef or lamb.

Photo C. Place oven door on outside of arch

Walnut: Heavy smoke flavor, great to bring out the natural goodness in mushrooms, potatoes and vegetables. Mix with lighter woods like almond, pear or apple to dilute the smoke flavor if needed.

Buon appetito from Los Angeles Ovenworks!

That is the question.  Seemingly superficial, yet it has many repercussions that need to be considered.  The wood fired oven market has been flooded lately with Chinese-made ovens, easily spotted by their low price.  The obvious bottom line for a customer is the price, so a company is always pushed towards providing the cheapest possible oven.  But what is the real price tag for the lowest price?

Made in Italy

A low price means that you can’t be too particular about where the materials that make up your oven come from.  The material may come from dismantled Chinese factories and housing projects and it may contain high levels of lead and/or other toxic materials, as well as radio-active material.  With little oversight and definitely a lot of corruption,  there’s really no good way for the customer to know what’s in those ovens. Other considerations come to mind as well, such as fair trade/wages, sustainability.

From the start we wanted our company to reflect our thoughts on life… slowing down the pace a bit, sharing good food with family and friends, giving back to the community, buying local organic produce and growing some in our garden as well… Especially nurturing loyal relationships with our customers and with our suppliers.

or made in China?

We love working with our Italian manufacturer because he really cares about quality and always strives for new improvements (recently he even added a restaurant grade floor to the home ovens).  Yet the market seems to place more importance on the bottom line/low price… What would you do? Other oven companies are offering Chinese  ovens without disclosing the country of origin.  Should we also sell cheap ovens?

What are your thoughts? Made in Italy or made in China?

Jules and the Renaissance Mamas

Have been too busy to post a blog lately… and that’s because I have been in the garden getting the weeds out and the seedlings in.  Tomatoes are such an important staple when it comes to pizza,  and we kept seeds from last year’s favorite, growing tomatoes indoors in the sunroom while preparing the soil with plenty of organic nourishment to welcome their growth outdoors.

Peter demonstrated pizza

I am making more space for edible plants in my front yard as well, nestling some artichokes between the hollihocks.  Soon the tomatoes will join them and there will still be space to add the zucchini later on.  I find the whole process very rewarding, from sprouting the first seed to canning my tomato harvest, the sauce being fabulous on wood fired pizza among its other million uses.

Basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme are easily grown in containers that you can keep close to use in your cooking.  It is super important to have good ingredients when cooking, and when not home grown, the best way to buy good produce is through your local farm or farmer’s market.  And the farmer’s market is exactly where you will find  my neighbor and friend Jules Blaine Davis.  Jules started  Renaissance Mamas to inspire women in the kitchen and to help them make healthy and sustainable choices.  Her cooking is intuitive and has a lot of flair, always bringing to the table her latest finds and surprises!

The Renaissance Mamas gathered  around the pizza oven for a demonstration of how easy it is to make your own pizza dough and various garnishes.  We tried out the potato, gruyere, and truffle garnish (see my January 2010 blog entry) and we also made some baby artichoke and sage pizza.  The weather was sunny and beautiful, it turned out to be a relaxing and fun class!

Pizza tasting!

We cook by the oven often, so don’t be shy, call us if you are in town and come over to see how easy it is to make gourmet food in one of our wood fired ovens!

Buon appetito.

A wonderful crust with fennel, mozzarella and fontina

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!

Chicken a la Chris

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!

Ginger-Apple Upside Down Cake

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!

Apples from Anniko's tree

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.

A great fire in the oven

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.

This beautiful oven has plenty of wood stored...

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.

Parmigiana di melanzane

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.

Layering the eggplant parmesan

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.

Grilling the portobella mushroom al pesto

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!

A great grilled appetizer

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.

Preparing the grill

Making the coals

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!