The best bread ever...almost

I've been mucking about with bread for quite a few years now. It's taken a lot of trial and error (and, I admit, a bit of reading up on the glamourous world of 'bread chemistry') but I've discovered that making really good bread is not nearly as complicated or time consuming as you probably think.

There are a few things that I believe are vitally important - your flour (I use Laucke Mills 'Wallaby'), using as little commercial yeast as you can (preferably none), the length of time that the dough is left to prove, or rise, your kneading method (as little as possible) and the baking method. I'm sure there are bakers out there who might disagree, but for me, these are really the key things.

Of all these, the baking method is the most troublesome, frustrating and often disappointing for the home baker. Producing a good loaf of the kind that I like to make requires relatively high temperature and moisture levels, and ideally, heat that is transferred via conduction, convection and radiation. This is why masonry bread ovens are so great and home ovens generally so inadeqate (they are mainly designed as convection ovens). Not having access to a masonry oven, I've tried lots of things to 'soup up' my modest little Westinghouse, some more successful than others, some more annoying and incovenient than others. At one stage I even had a tray in the bottom of the oven full of rocks collected from the garden to try and raise the radiant heat levels (it didn't, as far as I could tell but the house was full of acrid smoke for hours). The most successful thing I've tried so far is using a cast iron casserole (as recommended by the legendary New York Times no knead bread recipe among others). It gives a more than acceptable result, and is my standard approach these days. But every time I go to preheat my poor beaten up cast iron pot it only reminds me that my bread is, at best, only a rough approximation of what it could, and should, be.

Not any more.

For months our friends down the road have been labouring over a masonry oven. Hand built and home designed with a bit of input from the Internet and a friendly brickie, the oven has slowly emerged, in all its statuesque glory, from an unpromising pile of rubble and wheelbarrow loads of firebricks, sand, cement and vermiculite.
Yesterday was cold and wet and windy, but we were toasty warm as we huddled around the oven waiting for the coals to burn down and the oven to even out in temperature. This took quite a few hours - this was your genuine 'slow food' - but fortunately Phil has a well stocked cellar.

The baking itself was full of drama. As soon as the loaves hit the hearth they sprung up into little dough balloons before the crust started to form and get brown. Quite brown. Very quickly. While 'oven spring' and a crisp, variably coloured crust are the true hallmarks of a good hearth bread, I'm not sure that balloons and brown-verging-on-blackness are in the handbook. But hey, this was our own bread, in a real oven, and dammit, it smelt good!
Yes, we have to work on the temperature - all the loaves had to be rescued within 20 minutes (normal home oven cooking time is 40 to 50 minutes) - but there was nothing like tearing open the loaves to see a lovely, steaming, glossy crumb, smothering it in butter and eating while still hot. Absolutely wonderful. And though wildly imperfect, it was the most perfect imperfect bread I've ever had.