Clay outdoor bread oven??

[Marty1876]

Tell me more about your sour-dough starter please. I'd love to try it with some native yeasts. How did you go about it?

 

[erinszoo]

Tell me more about your sour-dough starter please. I'd love to try it with some native yeasts. How did you go about it?

We started ours with potato water. We were blanching potatoes for dehydrating one day and used the warm water that was left from boiling them. We added equal parts water and flour to three different canning jars and added about 1/4 tsp yeast to each of them plus 1 tsp sugar. Then we left them out on the counter until they got that nice sour taste that we wanted. The first day they bubble up nicely and grow. By the second day they are still bubbling slowly but have fallen. The third day they start to develop some liquid on the top and by day four they have a nice yellowish liquid on the top of them. At this point we make a batch of bread to taste how sour it is. If it's good we feed the starter with some more flour and water, leave it on the counter for another 24 hours and then put it in the fridge. It's usually great by this point. Then we use it about once a week to make bread.

For that process we take the starter out of the fridge and dump it into a big bowl. We add two cups of flour and two cups of warm water, mix well, and put it in the dehydrator to rise for a couple of hours. After it's all bubbly we put two cups back in the jar and return it to the fridge. The rest we use to make bread with adding flour, water, dried potato flakes, salt, and butter for a simple white sour dough. We add other things if we're making a whole grain like oatmeal and flax seed.

 

[Marty1876]

I think you need to post a bread receipe from starter or two!! I love potato bread, but a nice wholegrain sounds delish!

 

[erinszoo]

Haven't updated in a while. We added fire bricks to the base of our oven recently and it made it much easier to clean off the surface before putting food in the oven. We did pizzas a couple of weeks ago when our son was home from college and they were amazing. It was dark before we cooked them and we ate them as fast as they came out of the oven so I didn't get pics. Now that the days are getting longer it'll be easier to take pics of dinner when we cook it late. Lol.

 

[wyoDreamer]

How long does it take for your oven to get to baking temp?
And do you keep adding to the fire while you cook?

 

[erinszoo]

How long does it take for your oven to get to baking temp?
And do you keep adding to the fire while you cook?

If we're just cooking one or two things, like pizza and then a baked chicken, we'll warm the oven for 2 1/2 to 3 hours and not keep the fire burning, just cook off the coals. If we're trying to do several things or more than two pizzas, we heat for more like 3 1/2 or 4 hours and then we might add some wood halfway through. It's best to just stagger what you cook in order of heat needed with pizzas first, meat or bread (depending on what kind), casseroles third, and then meat or bread again depending on what kind it is. Our oven isn't very big or thick at the moment so it doesn't hold hot heat for long. Two pizzas is about all we can do before it cools downs too much with the door open, then we have to move on to other things.

We're thinking about adding another layer of clay this summer to build up the heat retention. It's held up pretty well through the winter with just a plastic tarp but I want to add some decorative touches anyway so another layer will allow me to do that.

 

[LilBeaverDoms]

Great thread, Thanks!
I now have another summer project! lol

 

[erinszoo]

Great thread, Thanks!
I now have another summer project! lol

Welcome from one Okie to another!!

 

[LilBeaverDoms]

Thank you! Glad to hear Ya'll got lots of rain!

 

[Marlene2012]

Awesome thread, thanks for posting ! This is definitely on my do to list this spring