Oven Porn (only naked loaves)

Professional staring is tax deductible?
As an accountant's daughter, I am thinking that any staring done on a professional level is both proper and tax deductible. In addition to a love for bakeries, I also have a thing for ovens. Before I start reporting on any, I offer background on my less than rational delight in the equipment that transforms a dough into a majestic bread.

Oven envy
I am jealous of all of those people with brick or adobe ovens in the backyard. When I see a brick or adobe oven at a bakery or pizza place I ogle and sometimes take a picture and share it with others who might appreciate a hot, attractive oven. I do not personally know anyone with an oven in the backyard and I emphatically do not want to build my own (how could I ever move?), but I fantasize nonetheless (also nightmares of burning down the house; hence the hesitation).

Before regularly reading and participating on the fresh loaf forum, before getting deep into fermentation, starters, and dough development, my baking porn was limited to the King Arthur Flour catalogue: designed to wet appetites and prompt gifts for the holidays. No ovens. 

Now, I fantasize  whenever I see a beautiful oven. I want to sneak in and bake one of my breads, just to know what it would look and taste like. The fantasy does not include waking at 3 a.m. to work early mornings in a bakery, however. Work before 9 has no place in any fantasy.

Some ovens worthy of a stare. Beware of developing oven envy.

Staring at ovens isn't polite, but ...
I saw an oven at a farmers market in DC that was hitched to a pickup truck. A big adobe oven making the cold market a little warmer. It was so mobile and I thought of stealing it, but I was on foot and I could not have carried or rolled a 4x6 foot oven into the subway. Pizzas were being baked on the spot. Nice thin crusts with bubbles in them. Lots of baking longing.

I read about a couple in Vermont who ran a small bread business out of their outdoor oven. Why is it always Vermont? They seemed like such a sweet, happy couple, too. Except for the cold, I would be tempted to go up there, or out to Oregon or New Mexico, buy some Birkenstocks, and build an oven. Maybe it's only my imagination, but I think of Vermont and Oregon, and similar places as filled with lots of friendly, DIY, contented liberals who make their own breads, sweaters and pickles. 

I've seen beautiful adobe ovens right outside of modest houses in New Mexico, and was tempted to request a try at one myself.

Are these bakers happy because they have big, outdoor ovens all fired up and lovely long- (hard, dare I say) handled baking peels? I assume they are happy; how could you not be with such a spectacular oven? Their sourdough starters are bubbly and growing, their breads are beautiful with brown, snappish crusts, and their organic butter likely melts into the soft interior of the bread. [Photo: Massive oven at Pitzze in Bethesda, Md.]

My favorite oven is at Frank Pepe's pizza place in New Haven. It's covered with old subway tiles. When opened, its almost-violent baking chamber can be glimpsed. Gruff, silent and capable - like an oven equivalent of a tall, laconic movie star. But the poor thing only makes pizza. My bread doughs could make that oven so much more ... satisfied. Worth the trip. You might stare at the oven, but have some pizza as well. Obscenely good.

One more confession: I read posts, lurk, actually, on the fresh loaf forum about brick and wood ovens just to peer at the beautiful ovens. Now that is the ultimate in oven porn, sometimes of the oven alone, unadorned, sometimes with gorgeous loaves, all baked, in these brick or adobe hearths.

Next on the horizon, perhaps lasting through spring and summer, local ovens and bakeries that, I hope, will delight my senses. If the need remains acute, I might have to travel to ovens and bakeries far and wide. I will keep baking as well, perched as I am at the two-thirds mark on the way to 108 breads.