Anna’s Wood Fired Oven Blog

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.

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!

In Italy I got accustomed to good, organic produce and it is a vital part of my cooking. We have been getting our produce straight from EarthWorks Community Farm in South El Monte. It is a beautiful location with fertile soil in the middle of the Whittier Narrow recreation area and we love spend some time connecting with the earth and the growing of things on Saturdays. Find out if there’s a farm close to your neighborhood at LocalHarvest.org.

Last week my husband picked fava beans, a large bag, and since these were my first taste of the season they never made it to the table! But I have promised my friends that next week I will hold off eating them all and make my all-time favorite bruschetta with fava beans pesto. You must try this, so easy and bursting with flavor!

We are also getting the beds in our small backyard plot ready for new tomato plants, since the sun is shining in California and welcomes these essential basics of Italian cuisine. So easy to grow, even in containers, and what a different pizza sauce home-grown makes!

Check out the Tomato Mania for all kinds of heirloom plants and seeds. If they are not located near you, then get your seeds from Seeds of Change, an organization that strives to preserve bio-diversity and promotes sustainable, organic agriculture. The old Italian tomato and basil seeds that have been grown in the USA and preserved for generations can be purchased from them. Try it, you won’t regret the flavor!

Carciofi, or artichokes, have made their springtime debut at the farmer’s markets in Southern California and baking them in your wood fired oven really brings out their full flavor.

Carciofi al forno — Wood fired Oven Baked Artichokes

6 large, globe artichokes

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 bunch of Italian parsley, chopped

1 handful of fresh thyme sprigs, l

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 yellow or white onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup bread crumbs

1/4 grated Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Wash the artichokes and trim the base so that they will sit flat. Pull off the leaves until you get to the tender inside leaves. Trim the top straight across with a sharp knife. You are going to stuff the artichokes, so you will need to trim off the leaf barbs in the middle as well, until the heart of the artichoke is exposed. Set aside in a bowl of water with some lemon juice added to it, to prevent discoloration.

Chop the herbs, the garlic, and the onion together and mix in a small bowl along with the olive oil, the bread crumbs, and the Parmesan cheese. Add generous amounts of salt and pepper, to taste. Stuff each artichoke with this mixture, pushing it in with a spoon. Wrap each artichoke in foil, closing it on top, and place in metal pan.

Bake in your wood-fired oven at about 500-400 degrees for 20 minutes. Take out the pan, open one of the foils and check. If it needs further baking, place back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so. Otherwise, open the foil carefully, and place the pan back in the oven for the artichokes to brown on top, this should take about 10 minutes.

Buon appetito!

At home, my husband Peter is the pizza maker, or as they say in Italy, the pizzaiolo. He loves firing up the oven and calling over a few friends. This spells holiday for me as we enjoy amazing pizza in the backyard.

Peter is often experimenting with different dough recipes, yet our favorite dough is still the Neapolitan, (click here for recipe). Growing up in Naples made me appreciate the consistency and the wider rim of this pizza.

A word about flour and mozzarella cheese:

• Pizza dough made from good quality organic white flour has the best taste. You may also like the Hudson Cream flour, check it out.
• Bel Gioioso fresh mozzarella cheese is what I buy because it has the right firmness needed for cooking in the wood fired oven. You can usually find it at Costco for a great price. Cut it in small cubes, rather than shredding it, this will prevent it burning in the hot oven. The mozzarella balls in water are too “wet” I find for use as a pizza topping.

Truffle and Arugula Pizza — Peter’s Favorite

Neapolitan pizza dough

Topping, enough for garnishing one pizza pie:

4 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, cut in cubes

4 slices of Italian fontina cheese

1-2 tablespoons parmesan cheese, shredded

1 handful of fresh arugula leaves

Truffle oil

Optional: 3 slices of prosciutto

Garnish with the mozzarella and fontina cheeses and place in the 650 to 750 degrees oven. Give the pizza a quick turn with the pizza turner after about 1.5 minutes and then slide out of the oven when ready, about another minute and a half.

When the pizza comes out of the oven piping hot, sprinkle the parmesan cheese, add the truffle oil, and sprinkle a handful of fresh arugula on top. Optional: add prosciutto slices.

Red Onion and Bell Pepper Pizza — Anna’s Favorite

Generally speaking, pizzas are topped with crushed tomato sauce straight from the can, but in this instance, I like the sweeter taste of cooked tomato sauce coupled with red peppers and onions.

Neapolitan pizza dough

Topping, enough for garnishing two pizza pies:

1 can peeled San Marzano tomatoes

1 small red onion, sliced

1 small red bell pepper, sliced

1 teaspoon balsamic red vinegar

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 garlic clove

8 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, cut in cubes

5-6 fresh basil leaves

Brown onion and bell pepper with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan on medium heat. When the onion and pepper have softened, add the balsamic vinegar. Continue to cook, uncovered on low heat, for about another 10-15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Make your favorite tomato sauce. Here’s what I do for a simple tomato sauce. Fish out the peeled tomatoes from the can and reserve the juice for other use. Slice the tomatoes. In a saucepan add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil and one clove of garlic. Add the sliced tomatoes, on low flame, let the sauce come together nice and thick, for about 15-20 minutes. Salt to taste.

Spoon tomato sauce on pizza with circular motion. Add the mozzarella cheese evenly. Add the cooked onions and bell peppers, but avoid the juice as this will wet the dough too much. Slide the pie in the oven and bake. Add the basil leaves to the piping hot pizza just out of the oven.

Buon appetito!

The Italian in me has the same attitude come good or bad times: let’s sit down to a well-prepared meal! It’s no wonder then that one of my resolutions is to cook up a storm of new recipes in my wood-fired oven. I will be saying “Buon appetito!” a lot.

Here’s a preview of what is coming up in the months ahead.

I am very excited about the pizza and bread recipes described by Charles Van Over in his classic book The Best Bread Ever. He breaks all the rules of bread baking and the result is incredible! He doesn’t proof the yeast, uses cold water instead of warm, and…get this… doesn’t knead the dough but uses the food processor. Genius.

I met Charles and his wife Priscilla last fall in Connecticut. They are both very accomplished chefs and are installing one of our Italian wood-burning ovens. I can’t wait to turn the spot light of my website to showcase their creative talent for your benefit.

When baking bread and pizza I have found that the taste is greatly enhanced by a wood fired oven. If you are considering installling a modular oven, the best ones are made of refractory clay.

What’s refractory clay you wonder? It’s high quality clay heated to very high temperatures and cooled after it forms into small balls with a hard crust and a porous center. It is in the tiny air bubbles within the center that the heat is trapped and slowly released. The exceptional thermal properties of clay can simply not be replicated within other materials, such as cement alumina.

This becomes apparent when you bake bread, because you will need to scoop out all the embers from the oven and use only the indirect heat accumulated within the walls and the hearth of the oven. If your modular oven is not well designed and isn’t made of refractory clay, you will find this process much harder.

In addition to featuring recipes by Charles Van Over, I will be sharing my own experimentations in the pizza oven. Lots of new recipes coming up, so stay tuned!

I wish you a very Happy New Year and may it be filled with “buon appetito!”