comment : Off
Man keeps fires of the past burning with oven project
BY RACHEL MEADOR
Ben Samuelson was 15 when he came to his parents with an usual request. Baking bread from scratch had grown from a hobby to a passion, and with summer vacation on the horizon and a knack for construction, he was ready to take his baking to the next level.
He wanted to build a wood-burning oven in their Allandale backyard.
“I had ‘Harry Potter’ on tape, the summer was hot, life was good and I was into bread,” said Samuelson, now 25. “Just seeing raw dough makes you chill out.”
More Austinites are exploring the possibilities of wood-burning ovens in their own yards. Whether choosing the hands-on approach or hiring professionals, local homeowners tap into the limitless culinary possibilities and unparalleled communal experience that only wood-burning ovens can offer.
With “The Bread Builders” by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott as his only manual and the support of his parents, Samuelson built the 4-foot by 6-foot cinder block wood-burning oven in three months. It is 7 feet tall.
“He came up with stuff that we didn’t think he could do but we figured we’d let him learn through natural consequence,” said his mother, Donna Samuelson. “But then he’d actually do it.”
He did it so well that his presentation on the oven earned him a scholarship to Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., where he majored in biology. Samuelson wrote a short narrative and filmed a small video on his oven in hopes of earning Hendrix’s full tuition scholarship for leadership and extracurricular activities. He was chosen as a finalist and granted half-tuition. Upon graduation, he received the 2012 Walker-Odyssey Fellowship, a $12,500 grant he used to study traditional foods and farming methods in Europe.
Once the oven was completed, Samuelson discovered the sense of community that the outdoor wood-fired oven can bring as its purpose transitioned from being a vessel for making loaves to sell in the neighborhood to a social center as he began hosting pizza parties.
“The pizza party is where the oven really shines,” said Samuelson. “You watch the pizza go from this raw dough with someone’s ideas designed on top to this golden brown, cheese-blistered thing right before your eyes. When everyone is involved with the cooking, it puts some of the responsibility on the party goers and everyone gets to taste each other’s creations.”
Dave Hirschkop, creator of the award-winning Dave’s Insanity Hot Sauce and founder of Dave’s Gourmet Inc. was struck by the authenticity of the family pizza party he attended. For Hirschkop, Samuelson’s interest in the quality of what goes in the food and the creation process was refreshing coming from a business where most vendors are focused on money.
“We’re so used to things being perfectly packaged for us,” said Hirschkop. “A fancy kitchen is nice, but all you really need is heat in the right place and someone who knows what they’re doing to make really great food.”
Sarah Slaughter and Dave Eberhardt felt the same way, and in 2011 launched Texas Oven Co., combining their individual passions for quality artisan foods and masonry to offer Central Texans “fire breathing works of art.”
Slaughter came to the wood-burning oven business as a homeowner with a love for bread baking when she found that conventional ovens could not reach the extreme temperatures required for many specialty loaves. Research led her to Eberhardt, a master mason with more than 30 years of brick-laying experience, mostly on custom high-end projects. Though Texas Oven Co. offers a wide range of wood burning appliances like indoor ovens for Argentinean style cuisine and smokers; the primary focus is the outdoor oven.
“When you consider the convenience people are used to, using a wood-burning oven sounds daunting, but it’s really not,” said Slaughter. “During the summer we don’t even turn on our indoor oven anymore.”
Slaughter will often cook from the heat of one fire for three or four days. A fire lit Tuesday evening reaches 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for pizza Wednesday; on Thursday it is still 600 to 700 degrees, the perfect temperature for sourdough and other hydrated breads, she said. Friday morning into evening she does her low temperature baking and extends an invitation to friends and neighbors to take advantage of the residual heat.
“It becomes a social hub,” said Slaughter. “With so much cooking space and heat, you might as well share.”
Eberhardt received his first order for an oven in 2000. Not knowing where to start, he also went to “The Bread Builders,” which he described as the bible of both bread-baking and oven-building. He ended up having several conversations with the author before embarking on the project. Using the book as an outline, he pieced together elements of other designs to create the ovens he makes today.
“I was a little embarrassed because I had never even considered building an oven before,” said Eberhardt. “Even with all my experience, that first one was tough and I wasn’t too proud of the finished product. Everything about that first oven blew me away.”
Texas Oven Co. also offers DIY kits for $1,500 to $10,000 before shipping costs for those who want the hands-on experience but lack the technical know how. However, Eberhardt said that most people who want an oven are willing to shell out the $10,000 to $15,000 to have the job done right. Given the option between putting together a kit and hiring an experienced mason without oven building expertise, Eberhardt said, choose the kit.
“I’ll talk to anyone who tracks me down because it’s a rare, special type of person who wants a fire-burning oven,” said Eberhardt, who with the help of one or two men, builds each oven himself. “They’re a means of staying grounded in our past and our humanity in today’s high tech environment. And they’re so fun. You can cook anything as well if not better in a wood-burning oven.”
Eberhardt said he would love to see everyone, especially kids, exposed to the craft. Samuelson agrees. He dreams of starting a program similar to the Allegheny Mountain School in Monterey, Va., where he is currently on fellowship learning about sustainable food cultivation and delving deeper into his passion for traditional food practices.
“As life gets more technologically inclined and people become more disconnected, I think the pendulum is going to swing back to tangible sensory experiences,” Samuelson. “And I want to be involved with the next generation of people doing this to keep the heritage alive.”
