March 2009 Blog Posts (9)

Yesterday was our 30th wedding anniversary. Time flies! The day we got married it was snowing like crazy and I had a lot more hair back then. Our oldest son, Jason, took this picture of us yesterday while the 4 of us were on a picnic.

Not oven related, but here's a funny. Molly, our Jack Russell/Chihuahua mix dog is plug and play ready. I the past month she has chewed up a USB mouse, 2 bluetooth headsets and now a 4 gig flashdrive. Where do I plug in the VGA monitor?

This will give me time to play with the oven and test recipes. I've got a "no knead" sourdough bread recipe I've been playing with to test in the oven. I also need to do some work at my parent's house. Dad has Alzheimer's and it's progressing. We borrowed his car last week. He's telling everyone someone stole it. He can tell you everything about making different radioisotopes that he has made when he worked at Oak Ridge, but he didn't remember his picture being taken 15 minutes later at the… Continue

http://bakedinaustralia.blogspot.com/

I got laid off yesterday. Here we go again. Right after we poured the patio 4 years ago the same thing happened. Now, just as I was getting ready to add to my outdoor kitchen!

Ed Levine of the pizza blog Slice and food blog Serious Eats, has traveled around the world, studying the merits of a great pizza. While eating and loving pizza is a simple act, making a truly excellent one is not. How do you achieve that sacred balance of puffy, chewy crust with oozy cheese and an acidic tomato sauce sweetness? Behold the 6 Commandments of Great Pizza-Making.







1. The… Continue

I fired the oven yesterday and today. I made some homemade mazzarella cheese today too. Someone in the group mentioned something about prebaking tthe crusts some. I gave that a try..... I like it! It makes it so much easier to slide the pizzas off the peel.

The weather if getting better. Should be near 70 this weekend. So I'm "preheating" the oven right now. I'll keep a small to medium fire going for a few hours and the crank up the heat and hour or so before we cook in it. My oldest son Jason (In the orange t-shirt on my cover photo) wants to have some friends over tomorrow evening. With the oven, I have a feeling we're going to be the regular hang out spot for free food! I can't complain, both the boys have a good group of… Continue

We poured the concrete cladding over the oven chamber Christmas day in 2007. If I remember, it was around 20, 80 pound bags of concrete. I used medium sized vermiculite as insulation and used 9 four cubic feet bags. The sides of the housing have about 5 to 6 inches of it from the cladding to the outside walls. The depth on top of the oven is a good 12 inches. If you look at my pictures, the insulation is poured even with the soffet line on the sides of the oven and mounded 2 or 3 inches deeper… Continue