The Bread Builders by Alan Scott

Author:Alan Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781603580137
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2011-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

MASONRY OVENS OF

EUROPE and AMERICA

Imentioned in the introduction to this book that I saw my first masonry oven at Heather Leavitt’s in Barnard, Vermont. I had heard about “ovens” for a couple of years; I had even sent to Alan Scott for his plans catalog (a year before), but I hadn’t baked in one. Truth be told, Heather hadn’t really baked in her oven either, since the party to which I invited myself was her oven-warming party.

It was a wonderful scene when I got there with my bowl of dough. The Leavitts had a tent set up in case of rain and there were kids tearing around everywhere, jumping up and down. The fire was roaring in Heather’s clay oven, under a free-form roof framed with saplings from the woods behind the oven. Even the oven tools looked great, made out of natural crooks of trees and odd lumps of steel by Randy Leavitt.

I introduced myself, formed up my batards, had a beer, met some nice folks, and got ready for the bake. Though Heather now teaches weekend workshops in masonry oven baking and is cool as a cucumber about it, on that day it was almost as new to her as it was to the rest of us—none of us knew exactly what was going on. We overheated the oven and then we didn’t wait long enough for it to equalize its hot spots and cool down.

No matter. We put my batards in, because we did know skinny loaves could take a little extra heat. A little extra heat? They were golden brown in eight minutes, though it should have been at least twenty.

Maybe they were a little underdone in the crumb, but who cared? When we pulled them out they were beautiful, cracking and popping as they started to cool, bursting with steam as we ripped them open and ate them without butter, with butter, with Vermont cheese, with imported Brie. Every man, woman, and child ate those loaves, and they were gone in a couple of minutes—it was like wolves on sheep.

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