The Little Oven that Could

Sayonara, soggy sandwiches from sliced bread that’s been squashed into the top of an esky on the overnight ferry! Bonjour, homemade crusty bread dipped into olive oil!!

Adios, cardboardy, supermarket-bought cereal! Aloha, nutty, seedy, wholesome, fresh-from-the-oven toasted muesli!!
Catch-ya later, boiled potata! Hello, roast veggie cous cous salad!!

Ovens open up a whole world of possibilities to the remote-living cooking experience. It is no exaggeration to say that this little contraption has changed my life. The photo above, which really shows how versatile it is, was taken on a day when we had run out of gas, half-way through cooking a cake, so we thought we’d whack it over a fire. It was a little difficult to control the temperature so the cake was inedible, but it got a good smoking! But usually it sits on top of the gas hob in the kitchen and is big enough to fit a loaf tin (with sides miraculously bent down by Wade so that it could fit through the door), a small cake tin or a small roasting tray.

I spend most weekends baking bread, cakes and/or biscuits, toasting muesli, roasting veggies. Not even the heat can stop me. I really like experimenting with different ingredients for our bread - olive and rosemary bread and focaccia (see the photos below), walnut bread, wholemeal fruit bread with dried cranberries, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, and a high-top style ciabatta loaf with crunchy semolina on the crust. I’ve also made a lemon and poppy seed afternoon tea cake as well as chocolate hazelnut cookies and passionfruit and macadamia shortbread. This last attempt ended up a dismal failure because instead of adding 3 teaspoons of baking power to the plain flour to make it “self-raising” I accidentally added bicarb soda. I ended up with these strange, puffy yellow globs, and the only way I can describe the taste is “chemical”.

There’ll be more photos of baked goods coming soon, straight from the oven, but in the meantime, here are a couple of loaves of bread that I’ve baked so far.

Olive and rosemary bread. EVOO, salt and pepper for dipping.

The dough was a mixture of wholemeal and white flour, and I also used some semolina and olive oil in the dough (as well as the standard yeast, salt and water).

I’d like to take this opportunity to throw all modesty aside and say that this is the best loaf of bread I’ve ever baked. Thank you.

Olive and rosemary focaccia.

This is basically the same recipe as above, minus the semolina, and proved only once before baking.