Awesome post! I loved it. I can relate with everything, except the broken stove. I have two functioning ones, so lucky me!
But I also have a pizza oven that me and my dad built ourselves. And it is the best cooking equipment there is! I love doing everything in it as you do! I still have to do rusks, that is on my bucket list. There is something special to a sourdough bread in a pizza oven. I worked in a bakery for a couple of months in which we baked the loaves in a pizza oven. My method is to make pizzas, then bake bread in the cooling oven, and then throw in a couple of thick pieces of roast overnigth. Pizza ovens are just the best!
I really enjoyed reading your post! Oh yes, I also found an awesome source for fire: palm fronds. I have so many, and they cost so much to drive away. So I use the "woody" parts to fire up my pizza oven like you use the thorn wood. As wood can be very expensive for us here in the suburbs.
Palm fronds?!! Now that is interesting. Thank you for sharing. We can use those as back up.
It's wonderful that you also have the experience of cooking in a pizza oven. There's no looking back for me. I think this is the new solution. The only draw back is there's no impulsive cooking. Tell me, have you ever baked sourdough rusks? I'm tempted to try
Indeed! They do not make anything that resembles a coal, but they produce enormous amounts of heat. So I preheat the oven with loads of palm fronds and resort to wood when I start the pizza.
Right! It takes so much planning and prepping and to utilize the oven and all the stored heat, you need to cook loads of food or bake loads of stuff.
Nope, but have also been tempted for a couple of months by the idea. I want to try two things: Sourdough rusks fermenting the dough like normal, and one in which I ferment the flour fully and then only add it when I completely ferment the flour (I think 72 hours or so). Obviously, the latter will be much sourer, but I am interested in seeing if it works with all the sourness.
I have dried out some sourdough bread, as I think this is the most authentic type of ancient rusks?? But they were a complete fail haha. The texture was way too chewy and not crumbly like normal rusks.
Oh yes! I remember that you mentioned not to long ago wanting to try the rusks. And with the discard? My quick recipe with discard (I hate throwing away) is to make flapjacks. My family now refuse to eat sourdough flapjacks
Why are they refusing to eat it? Are you making it too often? 😅
Oh, you should totally try scallion pancakes! Take sourdough discard and add scallions, chives, green onions, anything in that line, and make thicker style pancakes. The sourness and the scallions create an awesome savory taste! Yum, now I am hungry haha.
I will either write up something in the future or hopefully remember to let you know how the sourdough rusks went 😅
Yup. Something like that. Let's just say it was on the menu more than once or twice a week. But that scallion pancake.....hmmmm....now that sounds like a winner!
I used this guy's recipe if you'd like to take a look:
Oh yum!! Thanks