Wood-Fired Fun

[This is one in a series of blog posts written by Charlotte the Intern. Tune in daily to find out about what she’s been up to, what she has been learning about, and all of the crazy things she does as part of the Manna from Devon team.]

Today was a full day of cooking classes here at Manna From Devon. Holly was teaching a class of Italian cuisine (we all wanted in on the action, especially this guy), and David was continuing my bread education! It was a big day: my first time using a wood-fired oven for anything, let alone bread. We were baking up a bunch of loaves of sourdough for our stand at the Occombe Farm Harvest Festival tomorrow. We’ll have three varieties of sourdough for sale there: our seeded rye sourdough, all-white sourdough, and the Pan di Campania, which is made with a mixture of white, wheat, and rye flours. We’ll also have our apple oat bread, and some delicious focaccia. It’s amazing how much differently the bread bakes in the wood-fired oven. It puffs up almost immediately and bakes much more quickly this way, the crust hardening into a golden, crackly masterpiece. It honestly took a rather substantial amount of restraint not to cut into one of the loaves to have a taste test. They look, and smell, so beautiful!

You should all come out to the Harvest Festival tomorrow for a little taste test of my first go at wood-fired bread, and to see David do some cooking demonstrations. It will be the first year that they’re doing an event like this, and I’m really excited to see it! If Fishstock last weekend was any indication of food festivals around here, then it’s pretty clear to me that Devon does it right. Here are a bunch of photos to entice you…hopefully you won’t need too much convincing! And remember, if you want some pointers of your own from David on baking sourdough, there are still spots left in our free Sourdough Surgery session on September 24th!