Elaine Reeves explores wood-fired cooking in the ovens at the Queens Domain community Hub in Hobart
Where do you go when you have an occasional need for a wood-fired oven for your pizza, bread or Sunday roast? ELAINE REEVES spills the beans.
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I ONCE read a comment on the backhandedness of complimenting a photographer’s picture by adding “you must have a great camera”. It was, said the writer, no better than saying “that’s a terrific cake; you must have a great oven”.
But, it must be said, that when it comes to pizza or bread, a great oven really does make a difference. Most domestic kitchen ovens peak at 220C or so. A well designed wood-fired oven might reach 500C, cooking a pizza in a couple of minutes, or, for Summer Kitchen Bakery at Ranelagh, 40 sourdough loaves in 20 minutes.
Eighteen months before he died in 2009, I had the pleasure of spending a day with Alan Scott at his home in Oatlands. Alan had left Tasmania as a young man and returned here in the early 2000s. In the 1960s he was working in California as a blacksmith when a friend asked him to make handles for a brick oven she intended to build.
His obituary in the New York Times said: “He completely redesigned the oven, employing his knowledge of how heat is best retained.” While his oven design was based on tradition, the materials were modern. He told me: “It’s a bit like a microwave; I call it a ‘macrowave’, and you can get heat coming off the hot bricks all around — the top, bottom, sides, everywhere.
“The point is, if you have that intense radiating heat you can then make your dough much, much wetter. Once you shut he door, the bread, especially if it is a moist dough, starts to give off steam that eventually settles on the crust and gives it not only its colour, but its flavour.”
The bread from these ovens can be almost black, but the crust is caramelised not burnt. Modern commercial ovens can inject pure steam, which gives crispiness and colour, but not the flavour created by steam rising out of a natural-ferment bread.
John Glendenning and Marie Van de Gumster had owned Summer Kitchen for about three years when they began hearing about Alan Scott ovens in the early 2000s. John helped a friend build one in Melbourne, and he and his son Remo also helped Alan build one at his home in Oatlands.
In 2008 John began building his own behind a temporary wall to shield the construction site from the working bakery. Then it took about two weeks to work out the pattern to load into the oven. It takes five minutes to load the oven and on a busy night Marie says as many as 600 loaves are baked.
“It’s beautiful to watch, like a ballet,” she said. A fire is lit every day and cleared away for the actual bake. After the Christmas break it can take a couple of days to get the oven properly hot. Conversely, at Alan Scott’s “domestic” oven the temperature was reading 98C seven days after the fire was last lit — perfect for drying apples.
Last December two ovens built to Alan Scott’s design were opened at the Community Hub at the Queens Domain in Hobart. Located near the Soldiers’ Memorial Oval, they can be hired for private parties, but every second Sunday they are fired up for anyone to use without charge.
Two co-ordinators, both chefs with experience using wood-fired ovens, light the ovens on Saturday and arrive at the Hub an hour before baking is to begin on Sunday. People using the ovens bring their pre-prepared bread, pizza, roast or whatever.
The temperature in the ovens starts out at 300C to 400C and drops down to 180C to 250C by the fifth hour. Pizzas go in first when the oven is hottest. The co-ordinators can help with advice.
Peter Kerstan, who manages the site, said on some weekends 300 people turn up and there might be a 20-minute wait to use the ovens — but whatever you are baking the cooking time will be quicker than at home. If the ovens become too popular, the council will look at firing them up more often.
Winter hours for the Domain ovens are 11am to 4pm. They are fired-up every second Sunday — the next one is this Sunday, June 9.
See hobartcity.com.au/woodfiredovens for information on bake days and the Facebook page Wood-Fired Ovens at the Queens Domain for notice of events, such as pizza or breadmaking workshops.
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