King of Wood Fired Ovens in Cucugnan

In Roland’s small bakery  taking up most of the space is this monster wood fired oven.  You can see this is no-model-kit oven, it took 2 men at a time working on it who came from Spain, Ecuador and Colombia a year to build, it has something like 30 or 40 thousand kilos of clay.  For the inside the best clay was sourced from Spain and on the outside it’s plastered in powdered marble.  It then took 3 months of bringing the oven up to temperature, 20 degrees at a time so not to crack the clay.

The day Roland was using it for baking it had been 2 days since it was last fired up but the oven was still omitting heat, a constant temperature of 100C.

The wood Roland uses comes from managed forests in France.

It’s very difficult to convey just how large it is in a photograph.  It will take 100 loaves at a time.

The ceiling is domed shaped.

On the side of the oven is where the wood logs are burnt.

Before the lighting of the oven, the cleaning from the last bake takes place.

Lighting of the fire begins

I was very surprise to see how quickly the fire starts and gets fierce…maybe it’s because I remember using slightly damp logs in my Gran’s wood fired aga in Portugal when I was little…yes not a good idea.

Through the glass bar on the door below you can see the fierce white flames coming through from the side.

I didn’t get near the heat until later when it was on its last legs.

It takes an hour and a half to get to temperature at around 300C.

At that point Roland stops adding logs and waits for the temperature to come down to 270C

For a very big oven you need very very long peels

Speed is essential to get all the loaves into the oven.

As soon as loaves are in, the water is poured through a hole on the side of the oven which is lined with metal, the metal is so hot that as the water passes through it it boils up and creates the steam into the oven.

And about 35-40mins later the bread is ready.

And….Voilà!  I ate near enough a small loaf!

My weakness is a warm loaf…and one baked in a wood fired oven is really special.

Chad Roberston from Tartine is wrong, so wrong, there certainly is a difference in the taste of the crust of a wood fired oven loaf.  I could even smell it on my fingers after eating it.  It brought back memories of my childhood and my other Gran, the farmer baking her broa bread in her wood fired oven.

Roland has baked his loaves in different places in France and he says that he can taste the difference from a loaf baked in his oven to when they’re baked in another wood fired oven, the crust and crumb are not quite the same.  When I’m back in England I’ll just have to dream of that warm loaf I munched through.

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