fire bread

I love to bake.  Alison calls me the queen of quick breads.  When it’s cold, rather than turning on the heat, I bake cookies.  They warm up the house and my belly.  Butter has a nice two-burner gas stove, but no oven, and in our haste to leave LA after working two festivals, grading and finals week, subleasing, and moving Andre out of his warehouse, my solar oven got put on the back burner.  Out on an evening sunset walk, I reminded Andre that I’d really like to have an oven, hoping to motivate him to help me with the project.  Minutes later, literally, he pulled a couple of discarded restaurant-sized tomato cans from a bin behind a pizzaria. Andre is quite the creative designer, but these cans were going to be transformed into an oven?  Indeed, they were.

I tossed together roughly a pound of rescued whole wheat pastry flour, a teaspoon of yeast that had been in my fridge for ages, a pinch of salt, a medley of seeds, and a little water.  Then, I let the little loaf rise for an hour, gave it a quick kneed, then a second shorter rise.  Andre prepared the fire, then seated the dough on the shelf of my new oven and sealed the lid before placing the can on the coals.  About 40 minutes later… the most beautiful bread I’ve ever baked.  Quite tasty, too!  Thankfully, we have lots more rescued flour, although I’m looking forward to trying out the acorn flour we’re working on.