How to bake bread in a Russian oven. How to bake bread in a wood-burning oven

Igor Bartashuk from Nyuksenitsa bakes bread in a Russian oven. Using the same technologies as before. I started baking not only “out of love for art.” What could be safer and healthier than bread baked with your own hands without additives or preservatives? Now he teaches this craft to others. The work is hard and time consuming. We worked one shift with Igor Bartashuk.

“On the table are the baker’s tools - a bowl, a spatula and an oar for working with dough, a whorl and scales, as well as a supply of flour, salt, sugar and raisins,” - Igor Bartashuk this time bakes bread not at home, but in the Nyxen Center traditional folk culture.

I put the starter in warm water, I will put the dough on it.

The dough for the dough is almost kneaded, there is very little left. Now the dough doesn’t stick to your hands or the walls of the bowl, and it doesn’t smell yet.

Well, there you go, it's ready. Now I’ll cover it with a lid and take it to the warmest place in the kitchen - on the stove bench.

Birch bark for kindling

The salt is already ready, overbaked. Instead of wasting the heat, I’ll put beets in the oven for salad!

Meanwhile, the dough has risen and smells very tasty. If I use only rye flour for the dough, then when kneading the dough I add both rye and wheat flour. There is very little wheat, no more than 25% of the total amount of flour.

And here is the highlight of this baking!

Jokes aside, I work with an oar, the dough is very dense.
You could knead it with your hands, but since I bake bread in molds, I make the dough thinner, so if I were baking on a hearth, then yes, I could make the dough thicker so that it would be easy to knead with my hands on the table.

This is what the dough looks like after kneading: all the flour is in the dough, the raisins are evenly distributed throughout the entire volume.

Because I added a little white flour, the dough noticeably sticks to my hands. If you sprinkle flour by eye, without knowing the measure, until it stops sticking, as with wheat flour, then you can easily overdo it and get a dense and heavy lump.

The firewood has already burned out; I scattered some coals all over the hearth and got this picture - City Lights!

Eh, the stove is a bit low!

In the near right corner you can see a pile of coals along the right wall. And because of her, the loaves closest to her turned out more ruddy. In principle, it’s okay, but I think that next time I’ll remove the coals from the stove.

Soooo, the first one went!

The feeling when everything turned out as planned.

Any housewife who has at her disposal such a design as a Russian oven once wondered: how to bake bread in a Russian oven with her own hands? This process seems painstaking and time-consuming, but if you approach the issue wisely, you will see that there is nothing complicated in making bread.

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Before a delicious-smelling, appetizing product reaches the table, it goes through several stages of preparation, including mixing the sourdough. The very first step will be cleaning the oven and warming it up.

Preparing the oven

Before preparing bread, you need to clean the stove from the ash that remains from previous fires and warm up the furnace properly. If you periodically use the structure for cooking, you will need 6-8 logs, otherwise it will need to be thoroughly calcined. For this you will need from 15 to 17 logs.

Stacking firewood

The thickness of the firewood used should be the same, this will allow the stove to heat evenly without leaving firewood.

Firewood is stacked in the following way: kindling consisting of birch bark or thin wood chips is placed between two parallel logs. The remaining firewood is placed on top of the kindling in the form of a lattice. Using birch bark or a thin long splinter, the kindling is set on fire.

As the stack heats up, it is moved deeper into the furnace. To push the structure inside the stove, an elongated poker is usually used. It is enough to rest it against the base of the grill and carefully move it. At the same time, it is important not to destroy the fire, otherwise the scaffold may go out or burn unevenly.

This type of installation will burn out in an hour. As the wood burns, soot will appear on the roof of the stove, and as the stove remains warm up, it will begin to burn out, causing the wall of the roof to turn white. The cleaned, newly whitened arch will be a clear indicator that the oven is ready to cook bread. If the fire was built correctly, the wood will burn out at the same time, leaving behind small coals. They need to be collected in a heap so that they burn out faster.

Achieving even burning of wood is not so easy - kindling requires some skill and experience. Very often, those who perform these procedures for the first time are left with unburned firebrands. It is better to remove them and extinguish them, or add kindling material to them until they burn out completely, since it is the firebrand that can serve as a stumbling block for further work.

Coal distribution

The next step is to distribute the coals over the surface of the hearth. This will help reduce their temperature and prevent the release of carbon monoxide. It is very dangerous for humans, so before you close the damper, you need to make sure that nothing inside the oven can provoke its appearance. Beginners in this business are advised to play it safe and not rush to close the pipe valve. You don’t have to worry about losing heat from the oven. To preserve it, it will be enough to simply close the mouth.

After the stove is heated, it needs to be given time to brew. The optimal time period is 15-20 minutes. During this time, the heat will be evenly distributed throughout the rest of the oven, and the intense heat that can cause the dough to burn will disappear.

The oven is ready, all that remains is to decide on the recipe according to which the bread will be kneaded. The simplest options available to beginners involve the use of rye and wheat flour.

Step-by-step recipe for rye bread

Rye dough is considered special, and the process of creating it takes a lot of time. It is mixed with sourdough.

Sourdough is a small piece of dough left over from previous cooking. It is stored in a wooden bowl and then kneaded with the addition of new ingredients. To make bread you will need:

1. Bread leaven (usually leave a piece that fits in a handful, no more);
2. Warm water - 1 liter;
3. Rye flour - 2.5 measuring cups;
4. Wheat flour for dusting dough
5. Salt - 1.5 -2 tablespoons, spices to taste

Ready rye bread dough

Store the starter in a cool place, but a couple of hours before kneading the dough, place it somewhere warm. Recommended infusion time is 40 minutes. After that, pour warm water over it, add rye flour and stir the mass until it becomes thick sour cream. The top is sprinkled with flour, the mold is covered with a towel and the dough is sent to rise. For the dough to ripen to the required readiness, it should take about 10 hours. When it has greatly increased and is covered with bubbles, you can take it out of a warm place and form the dough. Add salt and spices selected to taste. Cumin and various seeds go well with rye dough.

Prepared dough in containers

After kneading the dough and letting it stand for 15 minutes, you can put it in the oven. It is served in a special form on a shovel inside the crucible. In 1.5 - 2 hours the bread will be ready.

Ready-made rye bread from a Russian oven

Step-by-step recipe for wheat bread

1. In a three-liter container, stir a teaspoon of yeast and the same amount of sugar, pouring the mixture with a glass of warm water.
2. Add 100 grams of wheat flour to the kneaded mass, bringing the mixture until smooth.
3. The container with the dough is covered with a lid and left to stand in a warm place.
4. After foam appears on the dough, add half a tablespoon of sugar and 500 grams of wheat flour.
5. Knead the dough to a fairly dense consistency. The formed mass is left for a while, after which it is kneaded again.

After this, the dough is dipped into a greased mold and placed in the oven. The bread will be ready after 1 hour.

Baking wheat bread in a Russian oven

Taking out the bread

Shelf life

Products cooked in the oven are distinguished not only by their excellent taste, but also by their long shelf life. Rye bread can last up to two weeks, and wheat bread - about seven. It should be stored in a soft towel in a dry place, but modern closed bread bins are also suitable.

The Russian oven for baking bread is a real find, which makes it possible to prepare not only tasty, but also healthy food.

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Homemade bread, which cannot be compared either in quality or price with store-bought bread, has been baked by a Siberian woman in Polesie for almost 30 years.

Bread Lyubov Ivanovna Monich learned to bake from her mother. The Siberian woman, by the will of fate, ended up in Polesie, in the village of Kolodnoye, Stolinsky district, not only preserved her native language, but also the traditions that were in her family in her small homeland.

One of them is baking bread. And today a woman does not buy either black or white bread in the store. She prefers to bake bread at home in a real Russian oven. By the way, the stove maker made it strictly according to Lyubov Ivanovna’s instructions, so that it turned out the same as in her native Siberian village. Lyubov Monich told and showed Media-Polesie correspondent how she bakes bread in a Russian oven according to a Siberian recipe in Stolin Polesie.

Preparing the dough

To bake bread, a woman usually uses both rye and wheat flour in equal quantities. This time, due to the lack of rye flour, bread will be baked only from wheat. A serving of bread usually uses two kilograms of flour.

The housewife divides a 100-gram pack of fresh yeast into eight equal parts and puts it in the freezer. When you are going to bake bread, break off one of the pieces and soak it in water for a couple of minutes so that the yeast melts. Add sifted flour, raw well water and sprouted wheat to the container with yeast.

– I do everything by eye. I don’t have a recipe that you need a few grams of this and so much more of this,” says Lyubov Ivanovna. – I add flour, wheat, salt, and water – I add everything by eye. Well, if I’m preparing dough for seven loaves of bread, then I add a tablespoon of salt.

It germinates wheat grains for three days. To do this, soak half a glass of dry wheat in water for 24 hours. Then he drains the water and places the container with wheat on the edge of a warm oven so that the grains germinate. Lyubov Ivanovna believes that wheat contains many useful substances to support the immune system. She also adds sprouted wheat not only to bread, but also to salads. For example, a salad of fresh cabbage, Jerusalem artichoke, onion, sour cream and a pinch of salt will be much tastier and healthier if you add a few sprouted wheat grains. For its germination, only fresh grain is used.

The whole mass is thoroughly mixed with a special shovel called a “whorl”. Lyubov Ivanovna never kneads dough with her hands. The shovel was called “whorl” in her small homeland, and that’s what she continues to call it here in Polesie. The current “whorl” for the woman was made by her eldest son Andrei. In this way, at this stage, the housewife diluted the yeast and left the container with it for a couple of hours.

After some time, the dough needs to be kneaded. The remaining flour is added to the container and everything is thoroughly kneaded. Then the dish with the dough is placed either on a warm oven for three to four hours (in the case when bread is baked during the day), or on the table overnight. If you put the dough in a warm oven overnight, it will sour and the bread will not taste good.

By the way, women prepare bread dough only in enamel dishes. Lyubov Ivanovna adds that she sometimes uses clay dishes for this, which she calls “ladochka.” But you can’t knead the dough in an aluminum container.

Fire up the oven and fill the molds

– There was a bakery in my homeland. I remember from childhood that when the bakery bought new baking dishes, they gave the old ones to the people. My mother also took those forms. So, one triple, in which I still bake bread, was left to me from my mother. I've been using it since about 1991. It’s unknown how many years my mother used them and how long they were at the bakery before that,” says Lyubov Monich. – It’s convenient to put bread in the oven in these forms. Before filling them with dough, be sure to grease the molds with sunflower oil using a brush made from a goose or chicken feather. I still make these brushes myself. Well, while the oven is heating, the bread pans are heating up.

– The baking time of bread directly in the oven directly depends on how the oven is heated. And this, in turn, depends on the wood that I use to heat the stove,” explains the Siberian woman. – Better, of course, alder firewood. The willow crackles, but produces little heat. Elm does not burn well and is difficult to melt; the wood from it must first be thoroughly dried. Oak firewood cannot be compared with anything, birch firewood is also good. But I never burn pine ones in the oven, as they smoke heavily.

As Lyubov Ivanovna says, her mother once made dough not with yeast, but with “samokvas” (sourdough):

– When I was young, I didn’t delve into this, so I forgot how it’s done.

When the dough has “moved”, which means it has spread throughout the pan, you can start filling the mold.

Baking bread

When the bread is in the oven, you need to carefully monitor the baking process so that it does not burn or become raw. The actual baking process takes about half an hour.

Before you take the bread out of the oven, you need to put a special bread handle on the table. You can put bread on it. Then the bread must be covered with another handbrake and covered with something heavy and warm (a small blanket or even a blanket) on top. Leave the bread in this covered position for an hour or two. If you take it out from under the “shelter” earlier, the bread will have a hard crust.

Usually Lyubov Ivanovna prepares a larger portion and bakes up to six loaves of bread. To prevent the bread from going stale, the woman leaves one or two loaves and puts the rest in bags in the freezer. If necessary, take the bread out of the freezer, it thaws - and the fresh bread is ready to eat. As a child, when there was no freezer, her mother took bread out into the cold room in the winter, out into the cold. It was not possible to store bread this way in the summer.

– We don’t buy bread in the store. And it's not tasty either. And it’s not always fresh. And the homemade bread is delicious. It’s not difficult for me to bake; on the contrary, I really like this activity; I relax when I bake bread. “Both my husband, children, and grandchildren enjoy eating our homemade bread,” added Lyubov Monich in conclusion.

P.S. Comparing homemade and store-bought bread

We weighed a brick of store-bought brown bread and a brick of homemade bread that Lyubov Monich baked.

The weight of homemade bread was 1 kg 15 g, and the weight of store-bought bread was 815 g. This particular brick of black bread costs 96 kopecks in the store, and the cost of a homemade brick, according to our calculations, was 56 kopecks.

Igor Bartashuk from Nyuksenitsa bakes bread in a Russian oven. Using the same technologies as before. I started baking not only “out of love for art.” What could be safer and healthier than bread baked with your own hands without additives or preservatives? Now he teaches this craft to others. The work is hard and time consuming. We worked one shift with Igor Bartashuk.

“On the table are the baker’s tools - a bowl, a spatula and an oar for working with dough, a whorl and scales, as well as a supply of flour, salt, sugar and raisins,” - Igor Bartashuk this time bakes bread not at home, but in the Nyxen Center traditional folk culture.

I put the starter in warm water, I will put the dough on it.

The dough for the dough is almost kneaded, there is very little left. Now the dough doesn’t stick to your hands or the walls of the bowl, and it doesn’t smell yet.

Well, there you go, it's ready. Now I’ll cover it with a lid and take it to the warmest place in the kitchen - on the stove bench.

Birch bark for kindling

The salt is already ready, overbaked. Instead of wasting the heat, I’ll put beets in the oven for salad!

Meanwhile, the dough has risen and smells very tasty. If I use only rye flour for the dough, then when kneading the dough I add both rye and wheat flour. There is very little wheat, no more than 25% of the total amount of flour.

And here is the highlight of this baking!

Jokes aside, I work with an oar, the dough is very dense.
You could knead it with your hands, but since I bake bread in molds, I make the dough thinner, so if I were baking on a hearth, then yes, I could make the dough thicker so that it would be easy to knead with my hands on the table.

This is what the dough looks like after kneading: all the flour is in the dough, the raisins are evenly distributed throughout the entire volume.

Because I added a little white flour, the dough noticeably sticks to my hands. If you sprinkle flour by eye, without knowing the measure, until it stops sticking, as with wheat flour, then you can easily overdo it and get a dense and heavy lump.

The firewood has already burned out; I scattered some coals all over the hearth and got this picture - City Lights!

Eh, the stove is a bit low!

In the near right corner you can see a pile of coals along the right wall. And because of her, the loaves closest to her turned out more ruddy. In principle, it’s okay, but I think that next time I’ll remove the coals from the stove.

Soooo, the first one went!

The feeling when everything turned out as planned.

Friends, hello! It turned out that the topic of baking bread in a wood-burning oven is relevant for many, and it so happened that recently we had the opportunity to bake bread on wood again in one small village in the Oryol region, so I will be happy to share my observations and conclusions with you. Arthur and I baked bread in a variety of wood-burning ovens: in Russian ovens, in Italian domed ovens, in huge Lithuanian ovens, in professional ones with a low arch, in transportable military ovens, and all these wood-burning ovens... bake in different ways! Each oven has its own “working” temperature and its own approach to heating, however, I will try to systematize such different experiences that have one thing in common - live fire and living bread! When you bake your first bread in a wood-burning oven, you will understand and feel: nothing compares to it, because everything in the oven is perfect for bread! And everything else, including even deck ovens, are compromises.

Temperature in different ovens

When you bake in the oven, you heat it up to 250 degrees, this is the temperature that is relevant for all home ovens without convection, moreover, the bread bakes there for an average of 30-40 minutes. In most wood-burning ovens, you need to start loading the bread at a similar temperature (average range 240-270 degrees), but the bread bakes almost twice as fast! Why do you think? I have written more than once in articles that the same temperature in different ovens is completely different things in the context of bread, and bread that was baked at 250 degrees in an oven will be very different from bread that was baked at the same temperature in a wood-burning oven. ovens! And all becauseIt is not only the temperature that matters, but also the nature of the heat.A wood stove is a huge, colossal heat storage device. Once you warm it up thoroughly, it will keep warm for many more hours. At the same time, there is nothing in ovens (and especially combi ovens) that accumulates and retains heat as well as a wood-burning oven does. The only thing that helps us accumulate heat from heating elements in the oven is a stone and a hood. Actually, all these gizmos were invented to bring our urban baking conditions closer to those of ovens.

For bread, it is the accumulated heat that is important, like in an oven: powerful and calm, a lot of accumulated heat without the rapid movement of air that convection creates. Bread in such conditions is baked much faster and better than bread in the oven; its crumb opens more fully and forms a more open structure.

Moreover, the bread creates the right amount of steam during baking to moisten the crust and open the cuts! How does this work? Well-loose dough, entering a hot oven, begins to actively evaporate moisture, which immediately begins to work for the benefit of the crust and the Maillard reaction, forming a thin and golden bread crust.

In our experience, the more heat the oven can accumulate (and the longer the oven hour), the lower the baking temperature will be. For comparison, we baked in a regular medium-sized Russian oven and placed the bread at 265-270 degrees, this temperature was the most suitable. And in a Lithuanian oven at this temperature the bread burned immediately, we started baking at 240-238. This is a huge, simply huge oven, the size of a two-room apartment (if not more), consisting of three large baking sections (within the sections there is an equally huge oven), and which is heated around the clock and never goes out.

Arthur supplies steam from a homemade steam generator between two sections of the Lithuanian stove. To moisten the chamber, at least 6 liters are required. water.

The firewood is placed in the furnace on the back side of the oven, the heat inside the huge oven spreads through special channels that envelop the baking chambers and heat them evenly.

What instruments are needed to measure temperature? How was it determined before?

Only you can know what baking temperature is relevant for your oven, and you can understand this through experience. To measure the temperature in the oven, we use a pyrometer - a special thermometer that measures the surface temperature from a distance using a beam. Ours is the most primitive: the range is from -50 to +380 degrees, it does not measure reflective surfaces, and we would like to change it to a more advanced one. However, even the current simple pyrometer helps us out a lot! If you have a stove and don't know how to approach it, the first thing to do is buy a pyrometer!

This yellow thing next to the containers is a pyrometer

In addition, there are special oven thermometers with a wide temperature range (up to 500 degrees minimum), which are installed in the baking chamber and display the average temperature around the ward.Previously, readiness to bake was determined using flour: they threw in a handful and, if the flour did not burn, it was believed that baking could begin.

How to heat it up, for how many hours, what to heat it with?

Before determining whether the oven is ready for baking, you need to prepare the oven!

• To do this, the furnace of the furnace is loaded with firewood, preferably completely (fruit trees, birch, ash, alder, oak, other dense varieties of wood, the denser the more heat they will give and the longer they will burn), and they are allowed to burn out for an average of 3. 5-5 hours (time depends on the type of wood; the looser and lighter the wood, the faster it will burn and vice versa). As firewood, it is advisable NOT to use a rotten fence with nails, which was thrown away by neighbors in the country, or old window frames, simply because they burn quickly, give little heat, and even clog the stove with rusty pieces of iron.

• As soon as the wood burns down to white coals and a state of smoldering , they are distributed over the hearth and allowed to smolder to the state of ash, which can take from an hour to three (average values), depending on the firewood.

As you understand, in order to do all this you must have reliable tools: durable mittens (they will definitely do, I’ve been using these for six years now, they are the best possible!). Pokers and brushes with long handles that will not burn or melt at high temperatures and will reach the far wall of the stove

Where to put the coals and ash?

As soon as the firewood distributed over the hearth of the stove turns almost into ash, turns white, but does not go out yet, you have two options:

• Scoop out all the heat completely into a metal bucket and clear underneath. This is true if you are planning just one batch of bread.
• If the size of the hearth allows, and if you are planning not just one loaf of bread, but at least two, rake the heat under the walls and towards the oven door, clearing most of the hearth for baking. At the door, the heat can be left outside in front of the door, or inside, the heat will protect the oven from a drop in temperature in this place. As in any other oven, in a wood-burning oven the temperature is also lower near the door and begins to drop first. After the first batch of bread has been baked, the ash and coals can be again distributed over the oven floor for 25-30 minutes to warm it up for the next batch of bread.

How to understand that the oven is heated well?

After you have dealt with the coals, measure the temperature of the hearth using a pyrometer, and then the temperature of the walls and roof. Let's be guided by the fact that the temperature of the hearth should be on average 260-265 degrees (at this temperature you can start laying), the temperature of the walls can be the same or a little more, but the temperature of the roof should be 20-30 degrees higher than the temperature of the hearth! This temperature difference between the floor and the roof is fundamentally important: it also indicates that the oven is heatedevenly, and whether you can start baking bread. It may also happen that if it is heated to 260, but the temperature of the roof will not even reach 200, you will not be able to bake good bread in such an oven, it will work like a frying pan, frying the bottom of the bread, and leaving the top pale or even damp . In this case, the oven needs to be heated even longer to distribute the heat more evenly.

Clean under or bake...on cabbage leaves!

After putting wood under the stove, it is always dirty with ash, and everything that gets into the stove will also get dirty with ash. In bakeries, the underside is usually washed: a wet rag (very wet) is put on a long wooden mop and quickly washed under the underside; the latter becomes much cleaner and dries instantly. The bread can then be loaded immediately as it is, this is very convenient! The downside is that after baking, the temperature in the oven drops noticeably and making a second batch can be problematic.

If you haven’t raked out the heat or are planning at least two furnace starts, then it makes sense to use the old well-known method - baking on wide, fresh leaves. For this they use cabbage leaves, oak leaves, we recently baked with horseradish leaves and everything turned out great!

If you bake in baskets, then immediately after molding you can cover the workpieces with leaves and leave them like that. If proofing takes place on a cloth or it is not convenient for you to cover the bread in baskets with leaves, you can line the shovel with leaves and transfer the workpieces on top. The leaves will not burn, but they will dry well to a herbarium state, easily separate from the bottom crust of the bread and make it clean, tasty and crispy. If you bake pan bread, then you don't need the leaf trick :)

When to knead bread and how much, when to light the oven

Please note: by the time your oven is ready, your bread should be ready too! On average, it takes about 5-7 hours to warm up and prepare the oven, so you need to start working with the dough either simultaneously with lighting the oven, or a little in advance, although this still greatly depends on the temperature in the room, what kind of bread you are baking and what kind of wood do you use?

How much bread?It is most effective to bake bread 1-2 times a week, but a lot, as they did before. This is convenient both in terms of timing and in terms of baking itself. By baking a large volume of bread in one day, you will not need to heat the oven often, spend too much time and wood on it, in addition, it is better to bake a lot of bread in a wood-burning oven, because it also participates in creating the right baking conditions - it evaporates moisture and moisturizes the crust. A couple of loaves will give very little moisture (steam) and the bread crust will be tough and tasteless, while 8-10 loaves (the number depends on the size of the oven) will give much more moisture, which will allow you to get a great crust! The finished cooled bread can be wrapped in film, frozen and defrosted (preferably in the oven) as needed, it will be like freshly baked!

Loading bread into the oven

To effectively load bread into the oven, you need a suitable shovel, preferably one that can accommodate several loaves at once, but it should not be very heavy. Most likely, the shovel will have a long handle and it will not be easy to wield it when there are 5-6 loaves on top. It’s good when a lot of bread fits on a shovel and you can load it, most often it is very difficult. Focus on your physical capabilities and the fact that the bread needs to be placed in the oven as soon as possible.

It’s good when there is someone who can help you with the bread: transfer the pieces to the shovel and cut them, but if there are no assistants, then take care of this yourself in advance, move the bread closer to the oven in order to quickly transfer the loaves to the shovel. Always use the blade together with the holder - this way it will not get lost, will not get into the dough or bread and will not cut anyone's fingers. After all, this is exactly what holders were invented for))

Bakery!

So, you've preheated the oven, you've made sure that the temperature is right, that your bread is ready to bake, and that you're mentally ready to bake, then it's time! Your task is to immerse the bread as quickly as possible, then close the door tightly and time it for about 15-17 minutes; usually this time is enough to bake loaves weighing 500-800 grams.A probe thermometer will help you understand that the bread is ready: the readiness temperature of wheat bread is 96 degrees, rye bread is 98-100. And it will also help, please read it, it’s generally about how to understand whether bread is ready or not, no matter where it’s baked!

That's probably all, I'm waiting for your questions! ;)