Bake-n-Blog 2/19/2009

My first attempt at overnight baking.



Baking large batches became somewhat time consuming to do in one day, so this time I decided to give overnight baking a try, the biggest concern for me regarding overnight bake was that I had to heat up my wood burning oven, but the process usually takes about 6 hours and I was not about to wake up in the middle of the night to start the fire in the oven.



I started mixing my dough at about 10 pm on Friday, by 11:00 pm I had all the dough kneaded and ready for the final 30 minute rest, while the dough was resting I started the fire in the WFO, at 11:30 I did a final knead on the dough and covered it to rise overnight. Before going to bed at midnight I filled the oven up with wood and left it to burn through the night. When I got up at 7:00 am on Saturday the oven was hot but all the wood burned out so I immediately started a new fire and with in 30 minutes I was able to fill the oven back up with wood and have a second burn in it. By having 2 to 3 hours before baking  the bread I was able to heat up the oven and have it all ready. By 12:00pm I was all done with my bake, cleaned the kitchen and had most of the day free for me to eat the bread, from now on overnight baking is the way to go.