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.

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.

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!!

Bid adieu to 2008, Christopher's

Christopher, Jaimie & Matt through an awesome party on the Dec 13, 2008. El Horno (Christopher's cob oven) did his job tirelessly and baked to perfection 51 pizzas. Christopher deserves a round of applause for making 43 delicious dough balls and I helped just a little by bringing 8 doughs. The snow started falling early in the evening but with the oven and extra fire in the fire pit we staid nice and warm. It was really an incredible setting for the party.

I bought the real imported Italian pizza "00" flour from PFI this time. I'm really not into the import idea but I wanted to do a comparison to the local flour that I normally get in bulk from the Central CO-OP. I'm happy to say that it was unanimous among my house family (i.e. Samia, Steven, Tarah and I) that it tasted more like Via Tribunali but was at best comparable in quality and did not surpass the standard all purpose organic flour that I get at the CO-OP.

Visit Seattle Hornos for more pics and pizza fun.

Election Night

Union Family (Samia, Steven, Tarah & I) went to a great party on election night in Wallingford. The hosts also share their outdoor space with their neighbors and have an incredible wood fired pizza oven. It's the old oven out of Cafe Lago. It was an incredibly memorable night. After the fun pizza party we headed home to Capitol Hill and there were helicopters circling the area. We started walking toward them and found a wonderful mob of positive energy. Pike and 12th were completely filled with people celebrating the election. We stood in a crowd of thousands of people and we sang the national anthem and screamed and danced and embraced one another for hours without letting up on the passionate energy. It was absolutely incredible!!!