Resurrection

Recently, the Pizza Builders were asked to repair and install a large, commercial, used Italian pizza oven. It took three days, a lot of care, time and materials, but the old horse now has new legs. As soon as it's cured, the chimney will be installed, exterior grade stucco will cover the dome and the lower storaged section will be boxed in.

Jim

Creating Traffic to My Website

It's always difficult to create traffic at a website. Some groups, like TrafficSword, act almost like a chain letter to build layers of traffic and get the website's head above water. I joined them today. Have a look here, http://trafficsword.com/020003 and you'll get all the details you need. We might as well help each other out.

Jim

Pizza Wedding

Jo-Anne and her friend, Jane, came here for our bread workshop last year. One thing led to another, and Jo-Anne and her husband, Jeff, decided to purchase a pre-assembled Italian pizza oven through our Pizza Builders service. The oven arrived in two pieces: a steel stand and the oven itself. They had the gazebo built and the facade treatment added to the outside of the oven. Last weekend, just one week after the gazebo was finished, they held their son's wedding outside at their country property on the Otonabee River near Peterborough, Ontario. We were invited to cater the pizza portion of the event, so the day before we made up sixty pizza dough balls and transferred them to the site in large coolers.

Many of the guests had never tasted genuine wood fired Neapolitan style pizza before. The three different types we offered went down to rave reviews. The servers ferried from the gazebo to the large marquee time and time again. It almost seemed like a race to see who could sample the most pizza slices. Many thanks to Jo-Anne and Jeff, and, of course, to the pizza team: Wendy, Kate and Margaret, for working like troopers.

Jim

The Hunt

It never fails. When people come here for our two-day wood fired artisan bread baking workshops, there are two predictable questions:

1. Where, oh where, can we find high quality bread and pizza making tools, plus fine ingredients, at prices that aren't outrageous and with shipping charges that won't break us?

2. After using your knives, pepper and salt mills, we think it's just not fair that gear like that is so incredibly expensive. Is there a way out?

We spent far too much time and money on both dilemmas until we searched out two very fine sources.

For bread and pizza gear, you can't beat Frankie Giovanni's on-line store. Visit him at www.fgpizza.com and enjoy the savings. His pizza peels, for example, are made by the world leader in Tuscany.

For the world's best knives, mills and all sorts of other high quality kitchen items, visit Paul's Finest at www.paulsfinest.com . Exceptional gear is always pricey, but Paul keeps the prices in line.

It would be a courtesy, of course, if you mentioned how you found out about these two great sources.

Jim

First Things First

This is my first foray into blogging. I'm doing this because I want to share the knowledge Wendy and I have gained over eight years of baking artisan breads in a wood fired brick oven. Ours is a high mass, Alan Scott design barrel vault that was built brick by brick on our property located to the north and east of Toronto, Ontario. Some six years ago, due to demand, we started holding two-day, weekend baking workshops here. Particapants have come from all over North America, east to west coasts, as far north as the Yukon Territory and as far afield as New Zealand.

Our real purpose is to share our knowledge about baking real bread and to promote the use of wood fired ovens of whatever shape or design. We're don't necessarily recommend one oven design over another, but we do try to stress that the type chosen really depends on the intended use: pizza first and breads or general cooking second, or vice versa.

We do have a website: www.marygbread, but in this blog we'd like to hear from the people out there who are interested in this growing community of bakers. Perhaps you could share your recipes, ask for troubleshooting advice, need some help with suppliers or choose an oven design. We'd be glad to hear from you.

Jim