This post contains a bit of consumerism and is full of references to commercial products, none of which caused me to receive any money nor non-monetary compensation.

This post has also been written after eating in one meal the amount of bread-like stuff that we usually have in more than 24 hours.

I’ve been baking bread since a long time ago. I don’t know exactly when, but probably it was the early 2000s or so, and remained a regular-ish thing until 2020, when it became an extremely regular thing, as in I believe I bake bread on average every other day.

In the before times, I’ve had a chance to bake pizza in a wood fired oven a few times: a friend had one and would offer the house, my partner would mind the fire, and I would get there with the dough and prepare the pizza.

Now that we have moved to a new house, we don’t have a good and convenient place for a proper wood fired oven in masonry, but we can use one of the portable ones, and having dealt with more urgent expenses, I decided that just before the potential collapse of the global economy was a good time as any to buy the oven I had been looking at since we found this house.

I decided to get an Ooni Karu 2, having heard good things about the brand, and since it looked like a good balance between size and portability. I also didn’t consider their gas fired ovens (nor did I buy the gas burner) because I’m trying to get rid of gas, not add stuff that uses it, and I didn’t get an electric one because I’m not at all unhappy with the bakery-style pizza we make in our regular oven, and I have to admit we also wanted to play with fire¹.

We also needed an outdoor table suitable to use the oven on and store it. Here I looked for inspiration at the Ooni tables (and for cheaper alternatives in the same style), but my mother who shares the outdoor area with us wasn’t happy with the idea of steel². And then I was browsing the modern viking shores, and found that there was a new piece in the NÄMMARÖ series my mother likes (and of which we already have some reclining chairs): a kitchen unit in wood with a steel top.

At first I expected to just skip the back panel, since it would be in the way when using the oven, but then I realized that it could probably be assembled upside down, down from the top between the table legs, and we decided to try that option.

This week everything had arrived, and we could try it.

Yesterday evening, after dinner (around 21, I think) I prepared the dough with the flour I usually use for bakery-style pizza: Farina di Grano Tenero Tipo 0 PANE (320 - 340 W); since I wanted to make things easier for myself I only used 55% hydration, so the recipe was:

• 1 kg flour
• 550 g water
• 2 g dry yeast
• 12 g salt

The next time I think I’ll try with one of my other staples: Molino Bogetto etichetta blu (260/280 W)

Then this morning we assembled the NÄMMARÖ, then I divided the dough in eight balls, put them in a covered — but not sealed — container ³, well floured with rice flour and then we fired the oven (as in: my partner did, I looked for a short while and then set the table and stuff), using charcoal, because we already had some, and could conveniently get more at the supermarket.

When the oven had reached temperatures in the orange range⁴ I stretched the smallest ball out, working on my wooden peel, sprayed it with water⁵, sprinkled it with coarse salt and put it in the oven.

After 30 seconds I turned it around with the new metal peel, then again after 30 seconds, and then I lost count of how many times I repeated this⁶, but it was probably 2 or 3 minutes until it looked good.

And it was good. The kind of pizza that is quite soft, especially near the borders.

We ate it with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, and then made another one the same way, to finish the mozzarella.

This was supposed to be our lunch, but we decided to try one with some leftover cooked radicchio, and that also worked quite nicely.

And finally, we decided we needed to try a more classical pizza, with tomato sauce and cured meat, of which we forgot to take pictures.

Up to here we had eaten about half of the dough, and we were getting full: I had prepared significantly more than what I expected to eat, to be able to accidentally burn some, but also with the idea to bake something else to be eaten later.

So I made two more focaccias with just water and salt, and then I tried to cook some bread with what I expected to be residual heat.

Except that the oven was getting a bit too cold, so my partner added some charcoal, and when I put the last two unflattened balls right at the back of the oven where it was still warmer, that side carbonized. After 5 minutes I moved them to the middle of the oven, and turned them, and then after another turn and 5 more minutes they were ready. And other than the burnt crust, they were pretty edible.

So, the thoughts after our first experience. Everybody around the table (my SO, my mother and me) was quite happy with the results, and they are different enough from the ones I could get with the regular oven.

As I should have expected, it’s much faster than a masonry oven, both in getting to temperature and in cooling down: my plan for residual heat bread cooking will have to be adjusted with experience.

We were able to get it hot enough, but not as hot as it’s supposed to be able to get: we suspect that using just charcoal may have influenced it, and next week we’ll try to get some wood, and try with a mix.

As for the recipe, dividing the dough in eight parts worked quite well: maybe the pizzas are a bit on the smaller side, but since they come one at a time it’s more convenient to cut and share them, and maybe make a couple more at the end.

Of course, I’ll want to try different recipes, for different styles of pizzas (including some almost-trademark-violating ones) and for other types of flatbread.

I expect it won’t be hard to find volunteers to help us with the experiments. :D