Drunken Goat 6 - 2010

This year's festival was incredibly great again. My mom and dad made a stellar rendition of the famous Piraat ale from Belgium with a whopping 10% alcohol and they had custom shirts made for the occasion (see pic below). Rob A (with some artistic guidance from Jen) made a Kolsch ale spiked with apple cider and lavender.  The lavender was used sparingly and the end product was a delicious light and summary ale. Tarah and I made our first rye ale. It was also a good example of a summary ale with some citrus notes. A small volume of three other homebrews brought the total to 6 this year. Daren and Brina (seen above) didn't have time to build an ale so they did the very next best thing, they came as ale. Brina with a grain wreath and Daren with one of hops. In all my dad counted ~60 people and we cooked ~55 pizzas. I'm really thankful to my friend Andrew who allowed me to mix the dough up in the 20 qt. Hobart mixer he keeps next to his bead in his studio apartment (now that's a sign of a real baker). I made 50 doughs and Anna made ~5 gluten free doughs.

El Horno de Union Design

Here are some plans (or sketches) for the wood fired clay oven we made. We were able to finish the entire project, not including the roof, in about three days of work. Since we live in Seattle it's necessary to have a roof over the cob. We had some guys that build bicycle tailors and work down at 20/20 cycle weld us up a roof frame that we then covered with corrugated sheet metal.

The clay for the oven came from a local gravel quarry. They hate hitting clay veins and happily give it away. I got it from a woman who bought an entire semi load of this clay for only the cost of the driver's time. She used the clay to make an entire cob house (see picture below).

I tried to use some old fire bricks that I got off Craig's List. It quickly became obvious that used bricks are just too imperfect and would simply not work for the oven floor. So we had to purchase new bricks but ended up using all the old fire bricks to build the attached grill area.

The only other building component that had to be purchased was the sand. I'm sure that if we had of just tried, we probably could have gotten the sand for cheap or free but instead we just got it from the masonry section at The Home Depot.

Drunken Goat's Celebration of Ale 5

The Drunken Goat's Celebration of Ale is a homebrew festival we host once a year. The idea is that people either bring a homebrew to share or food to add to the potluck with Tarah and me making the main dish. In past years the main dish has ranged from making a large pan of paella, to building a cinderblock oven and roasting an entire pig. This year with the completion of El Horno de Union we had pizza. My buddy Andrew (co-founder of the Columbia City Bakery - one of my very favorite bakeries in the city) has a commercial sized dough mixer that he keeps next to his bed in his apartment - there's no room for this thing in his kitchen. I was going to go to his place and use it but I didn't plan far enough ahead and ended up not getting it arranged in time. So in the end I kneaded by hand enough dough for 54 pizzas!

The beer turnout in the past has ranged from 5-9 beers but this year blew the record away with a whapping 14 beers, 1 hard apple cider, 2 pops, and a peach ice tea.

Wood

We had fired up the oven twice with untreated, soft wood, 2x4 scraps. This wood was exceedingly easy to light, burned hot and fast and subsequently heated the oven up quickly. However, there was excessive amounts of smoke any time you put new wood in and once the oven got fairly hot (~600 F) the smoke turned to this nasty black creosote smoke. I talked with Mike from Rolling Fire at the University Market - I should mention that he is really making some of the best pizza in Seattle - and he suggested that the soft wood was just burning so fast in the hot oven that it couldn't burn efficiently and recommended using fruit wood instead. So I called up my buddy in Yakima that woks part time in his father-in-law's cherry orchard. He asked if I needed like a truck load to which I responded with a solid "oh crap no, just enough to fill up the back of my little VW Golf." Yeah it turns out getting a hold of fruit wood in Yakima is no problem. We filled the back of our Golf and didn't make a dent in the slash pile we were pulling from.

This last week we fired it up using the new wood and the difference was amazing. The cherry is hard to start so I used the 2x4 scraps to get it started. There was very little smoke, the wood formed hot coals, and we never reached a nasty black smoke period. We did have to watch it a little more closely and in fact at one point had to use the 2x4 scraps to restart it.

Pizza Party

We had a successful oven firing and an incredibly good time on the 3rd. The 20 of us made short work of 23 pizzas. After the pizzas I baked 6 baguettes and finally a puffy pancake (Dutch baby) with raspberries.

You can see plans and other details of the oven at the following.
http://farsi-una-pizza.blogspot.com/search/label/Horno

El Horno de Union es VIVO!!, Seattle Cob Oven

We had a party for all the people that helped build our oven and successfully fired it to full pizza temperatures this last weekend. The oven has been drying for about a month now and we have had some small fires but this was the first time we really fired the shit out of it. We don't have a thermometer but it was definitely super hot; the pizzas cooked in no time.

seattle clay oven

El Horno de Union day 3, Seattle Cob Oven

Structurally the oven is all done now. We need to let it cure for a couple more days and then we'll take out the door (praying that it doesn't collapse), and remove the sand form from inside. After that we will still only light small fires, curing it slowly for a couple more weeks. On Monday I used the grill area on the side; it worked but the fire didn't stay very hot so I may need to add a grate that the coals sit on for better air flow. The lines all over it are to enable the final decorative layer to stick. We'll do that layer out of terracotta colored clay and press beach glass into it. The chimney is made of an old Seattle clay sewer pipe that I got from my neighbor; it's not for the oven, it was intended to encourage good airflow across the grilling area but at this point it seems to be more for looks than anything. More pics at http://groups.google.com/group/seattle-hornos/web/union-framilys-horno-construction.

El Horno de Union dia dos, Seattle cob oven

It's really looking great now!!

We ran out of sawdust and clay so we still have another day to go. The totals now are all 12 buckets of clay, ~12 60 pound bags of sand (remember to get the masonry sand not the sandbox sand), all five bags of sawdust, and ~10 wine bottles (I forgot to mention that those are under the fire bricks for insulation). I'm going to have to go pick up I'm guessing 6 more buckets of clay this week. We had a stellar time and so many friends came and helped. Go to "Seattle Hornos" for more pictures.

El Horno de Union dia uno, Seattle Cob Oven

This last weekend we got a good start on El Horno de Union (that's the name that Tarah and I came up with tonight but we're definitely game for suggestions). We picked up ~12, 5 gal buckets of clay from a fellow cobber out in Bothell (this stuff is so pure it could be potters clay), 7 bags of gravel/sand from home depot's cement department, and 5 big bags of sawdust from Compton Lumber on 1st (they were really great about it; they just have a huge room sized dumptster that all the shavings get blown into so I climed in and scooped away). With that we were ready to start cobbing.

We ended up getting level to the firebrick deck. We'll come back to it next weekend.

Pizza Dough Recipe

I have been working on this recipe for a while now. I have experimented with olive oil, yeast levels, rising times, moisture levels, bread vs. all purpose, and even "00" imported pizza flour. I find this recipe gives a delicious, chewy, and thin crust. I have mostly been using it in my home oven with pizza stones but I have also successfully used my dough in some outdoor wood fired ovens. This recipe makes 6+ dough balls (typically I make double this and it makes 13 balls). WARNING - it's ready on the third day.

(note I updated this recipe as of 4/2/10. I realized that I was basically never getting all the flower mixed in so this time I weighed the extra flower and this in now a proper representation of the flower to water ratio.)

825g Organic all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. Active dry yeast
4 tsp. Fine Sea Salt
2.5 cups Water (1 cup warm for proofing the yeast and 1.5 cups cold)

Add the yeast (plus just a dash of raw sugar) to the warm water and let stand until bubbly and active (this may take 10 minutes or more but it's important so let it go until obviously active). Add yeast mixture and remaining water to bowl of mixer along with about 1/2 the flour. Mix the "batter" like dough with a wood spoon for a few minutes (always in the same direction to help begin to develop the long gluten strands . Add 1/2 the remaining flour and Knead with the dough hook for 5 minutes. Mix the salt with ~1/2 cup of the remaining flour and add mixture to dough. Continue to knead for ~5 more minutes. Let the dough rest for 5 or 10 minutes then pull it out of the mixer for a final hand kneading. As you kneed, work in enough of the remaining flour such that it ends up being sticky but not so sticky that it's difficult to work with. Continue kneading until the dough is nice and smooth; maybe another 10 minutes. Form the dough into a somewhat tight ball and oil lightly with olive oil. Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for ~1 hour at room temp or until the dough has doubled. Refrigerate for 1 day.

Remove from fridge and let warm up for ~1 hour. Cut the dough into 6 pieces (they should each be ~205 g). Form the doughs into nice tight balls. This can be done by cupping the dough in your hand and sliding it across the counter. The friction of the dough on the counter should be pulling the outer surface tight. This step is actually quite important so do some practicing. You don't want to tare the outer surface but you do need good tension on the ball. See the link below to my video of making dough balls. Lightly oil your balls (tee hee) with olive oil, place on Sil Pat or well oiled cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and place back in the fridge for another day.

Dough Ball Video

Remove from fridge 2 to 3 hours before you make your pizza so they are easy to work with. I like to make a fist with my left hand (non-dominate) and stretch it over that fist. It will be quite sticky so you will need to flour the table and you hands and the dough. Stretch it fairly evenly until it's 10-11" in diameter. The center will tend to get too thin leaving thicker outsides so try to avoid this.

Preheat oven with the pizza stone in it to 550 F (or as hot as your oven will go). This needs time to really get fully up to temp so I usually turn this on ~1.5 hours before I start making the pizzas. Or if your using a wood fired oven like ours (http://farsi-una-pizza.blogspot.com/search/label/Horno/) then we typically wait for the base of the oven to be in the 700 range and the ceiling at that point is well out of range of the 1000 degree limit of our IR gun.

Farsi Una Pizza!!