Wood 🪵 fire 🔥 magic

I really want a wood-fire brick oven! Shoutout to Boss Bagel ( bossbagel.com ) in San Antonio, TX for helping me really excavate this desire. Something at TOB we are always after is the pursuit of the perfect bagel. I don’t know if an actual perfect bagel is attainable. Even the idea is a bit elusive - sorta like a shadow in a fog. But the idea of the perfect bagel drives us at TOB. The idea that something like a bagel could seize and capture a moment - no matter how brief - that brands the psyche, tickles the emotions, and awakens the tastebuds. THAT is why I want a wood-fire brick oven!

‘Why a brick-oven?’ you may be asking yourself (for no other reason than you’re reading this)! Well to put it in simple terms - a wood-fire brick oven has superpowers.

Superpowers ? ‘Yes’ superpowers. Obviously it doesn’t have invisibility, flying, or multitasking (in my life that’s a legit superpower!). Wood-fire brick ovens actually boast three different types of heating mechanism. And each type of heat renders a different kind of effect acting upon those feisty but amazing starches that results in nothing-less-than a feat-of-culinary-wonder!

First there’s the conduction heat. This one’s pretty simple. Wood isn’t a good conductor of heat but metals are especially steel. And brick 🧱can be a decent conductor of heat hence the brick oven element! Brick particularly provides a more uniform cooking area so when something like a dough comes in contact with it heat gets transferred from the brick-to-the-dough giving us some wonderful Maillard reaction browning. Think of the ‘leopard skin’ brown spotting underside of a Margarita pizza. Delicious!

Next there’s convection heat where heat is moved ♨️ around (think convection oven where fans are in the oven to, wait for it, move the heated air around) and this process of moving heated air actually bakes/cooks things faster.

Lastly, there’s radiant heat ☀️ and this comes from the heat radiating from the oven walls and ceiling. The high temperatures of the brick and the oven dome emit infrared radiation, cooking the food from all sides and enhancing browning.

When these three heating methods are combined together culinary magic occurs. It’s like mixing jazz-funk and techno together with Van Halen as a standby.

Remember what was said earlier about heat being an ingredient well a brick-oven REALLY shows what that means. Things ‘just happen’ in a wood-fired brick oven that can’t happen in other ovens. And this kind of oven has to be appreciated and worked with in special ways too!

So that’s it for today . . .that’s my dream for the day (well or years now for me!) is working with a real wood-fire brick oven some time soon. Because I bet a bagel baked in a wood-fire brick oven is FIRE! 🦦