Hearth loaves, wood-fired cooking, traditional baking - all potential uses for the wood-fired masonry oven pioneered and made popular by Alan Scott. This workshop will explore the history of masonry ovens, oven construction, mixing dough and brick oven baking. Over the four days of the course we will, as a class, build a 32" x 36" oven starting with hearth construction, followed by the oven walls, arches, door and facade in succession. Construction will end with the facade arch and chimney, as time permits. The building of the foundation, block walls and the finishing of the oven facade, its insulation and housing will be explained in detail. Interspersed with oven building we'll be mixing dough and baking bread! The focus of this portion of the class will be naturally leavened (sourdough), whole grain breads such as whole wheat, rye, spelt and kamut. By class end you'll have natural leavened and baked bread to take home, plus all the knowledge needed to build your own oven and bake in it. To provide hands-on experience for all students in each of the aspects of building, this class is limited to 10 students.

In the course, we’ll also make white-flour based sourdough loaves and yeasted bread and host a pizza night for the North House community at large, all the while learning about starting your own natural leaven from scratch, preparing leavens for baking, learning about the baker's percentage, creating your own recipes, and of course how to fire and bake in North House's brick oven.

At the close of the course, the student-built oven project (the masonry shell of the oven - 2 tons) will be for sale at a defined price to interested students. If multiple students are interested, a raffle will decide who will bring the oven back to their home and community for years of wood-fired baking!

Dates

Fri, May 18, 2012 - Tue, May 22, 2012
Fri, Jun 29, 2012 - Tue, Jul 03, 2012
Wed, Sep 26, 2012 - Sun, Sep 30, 2012

Course Details

--Select a Start Date-- 05/18/2012 06/29/2012 09/26/2012