Cake and/or bread recipes?

Has anyone successfully cooked a cake (or cupcakes) and/or bread in your pizza oven and is willing to share your recipe and cooking time/process?

I bake bread regularly in the oven. I tried it in the brick oven and was not happy with the result. In my opinion the smokey flavor ruined it, so I never tried again.

I saw a YouTube video of someone making bread in a brick oven. What they did was build up the temperature then remove the embers completely before putting the loaves in. The retained heat is enough to bake the bread and, of course, this would remove the smokey flavor. I haven’t tried it.

Perhaps others have had better results than me - I’d be interested to hear if they did.

The one type of bread I have had success with is Nan. However it cooks in a minute or two so there isn’t much time to pick up the flavor of smoke. I think Pita would work too.

As for recipes, just use the same as you would use in an oven but keep a close eye on temperature. Most breads require cooking to +/- 210 degrees - pull them as soon as it reaches that in the center of the loaf. As with other breads, you need steam at the beginning to create a good crust. Heat a cast iron skillet or sturdy tray with the oven so it is really hot then add ice as you put the bread in.

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Hi Tum! I’m hoping you are now in the middle of the big family event for which you were making your oven.

Once your oven is cured, you have a space that can retain heat for many hours. For pizza, you have to keep stoking up the flames to keep your oven at the high temperatures that are the main reason you built it.

But with some management you can roast, bake, grill, and even bake bread. As @Brian has noted, baking bread successfully means an empty oven—no flames, no coals, no ashes. You can establish this at the end of other cooking activities by spreading out the coals, closing the door, and allowing the oven to regulate itself to an even temperature. When you’re ready to bake, you use a peel or ash scraper to pull all the coals out, close the door again, and let it regulate for a few minutes. The heat that was concentrated in some parts of the oven will transfer within the oven, and result in an even temperature for baking.

I’m stealing freely from Andrea Mugnaini’s The Art of Wood Fired Cooking for these observations. It’s a book you should get for yourself. It includes a lot of recipes, and more importantly it focuses on how to set up and use your oven for almost any kind of cooking.

Happy baking!

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Thanks for helpful replay as usual! The oven was the focal point for all the adults and the actual pizza cooking/baking was a huge success despite that I did not do a test/practice run prior (i literally finished the day 6 of fire curing the night before the parry)! I still have to wash off the motar stains, re-grow my grass, and close off the front with fire bricks…but the oven is functional and worked wonderfully. I could not be happier with my choice to buy this kit thru brickwood ovens!

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Those are truly heartwarming photos, @Tum! You powered your way through the process and got it done. SO impressive, and so glad to hear that folks were brought together by your hard work. That’s exactly what a project like this is supposed to do!

Here’s to many laughs and many stories, hot flames and delicious meals from your new oven. Cheers to you—you did it!

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BEAUTIFUL Job on your oven and I’m glad to see you got the wood-fired BBQ grill assembly. We used to offer them, but Amazon pretty much nipped that in the bud…

I can’t add anything more to the conversation - but you did state that you are going to clean the mortar stains off the oven, so I’d like to throw my 2-cents in on that -

Make sure you use Acid Magic to remove any residue - and to make the color in the brick / block / veneer really POP!

Just make sure that you aren’t planning on using the oven for about a week (to allow the oven to dry) - and throw a couple of old towels inside the oven to absorb and water that may enter during the cleaning process.

  1. Spray the oven and base w/ water. Not enough to saturate all the brick, but enough that you know the acid won’t soak into the brick.

  2. Put on gloves, eye protection and a dust / surgical mask.

  3. Working from the top-down and in small sections, apply the Acid mixture (4 Parts water to 1 Part Acid Magic) to the masonry w/ a scrub brush and scrub vigorously.

  4. Allow the Acid to do it’s “magic” for about 5 seconds then immediately spray it all off. DO NOT allow the acid mixture to set for more than 5 seconds or it will start to fade the color pigment in the masonry.

  5. Do this on the entire oven - then allow the oven to dry for about 24 hrs.

  6. Do touch-ups (if needed) the next day.

  7. Allow the oven to fully air-dry for about a week.

  8. Enjoy!

Acid%20Magic

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If I plan on using Muriatic Acid, is that the same ratio and application time (5 seconds)? I’ve watched videos of others cleaning off stains with this but it wasn’t to clean an oven (just a wall). Is Muriatic Acid bad for the ovens in particular?

I have personally destroyed a brand-new paver display using straight muriatic acid (even watered down). I don’t know where I screwed up… but I never used it again. Expensive lesson learned.

I’ve used Acid Magic many, many times w/ great success. It’s my go-to cleaner for cleaning soot off the oven and making masonry look like new.

It’s safer on the pavers / brick / masonry… and if it hits your arm, it’s not as painful / damaging as straight acid.

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Have you known anyone to use a high grit wet sandpaper to clean mortar residue from the brick? Do you think that may work?

Thanks a bunch for your real life experience with the two diff types of acid products! That was enough to convince me to abandon my Muriac Acid solution. I just bought Acid Magic off amazon. Unfortunately (and fortunately?) I will not have a full week to rest my oven as I have a party (and sometimes two!) each week for the rest of this month.

The videos Ive seen (or ive read somewhere…cant fully recall) say that simply scrubbing wont work because the brick actually absorbs the mortar and the acid is needed to extract it.

You’ll see the Acid Magic bubbling - like when you pour Hydrogen Peroxide on a cut. I’m not sure of the actual scientific process that is going on in there… but it works very, very well.

As for sandpaper - oh no, it will make the brick / veneer look funky. Plus, you’ll just burn through sandpaper. Just grab some Acid Magic at Wally, HD, Lowes, Ace, True Value - usually in the paint remover area.

Takes minutes…