Tools Are Made, Born Are Hands

Jim Wills’ book on wood-fired bread is more than a cookbook. I begins with the history and technology of wood-fired ovens, with photos of the ancient ovens uncovered in Pompeii. Following the history of the bread oven are step-by-step examples, like Portuguese bread, French bread, and pizza. My favorite recipe was the Molino Caputo Tipo pizza, which has a relatively simple dough, only needs to be kneaded once. He give the recipe for a simple tomato sauce, then recommends lifting the edges to make a “rim” so the sauce doesn’t run off. He also recommends imported Italian flour, which has more elasticity than American flour and won’t “spring back” after you roll it. My only problem is that he doesn’t say much about the use of cheese. However, he more than makes up for it in his guide to preparing the dough.

Instructions for building wood-fired ovens are given too, but I won’t go into that. It would change the purpose of this review from fragrant hunger-inducing bread to Bob Villa “build it yourself” territory which deserves its own book (come on now, what kind of self-respecting backyard handyman can live without his own brick pizza oven?) and would take up too much room. For all you doomsday preppers out there, this book will come in handy when the truckers call a strike and the “fresh” rolls from the bread factory don’t arrive at the local A&P. He also goes into the scientific part, and explains, with photos, how a proper brick oven uses a limited amount of wood and conserves heat. This would have to have been the case with the ancient ovens in Pompeii, because firewood was valuable in Italy.

I’ve been baking my own bread now for about 4 years, and I got all my recipes online. But if I’d had this book, it would’ve been a lot easier and a bit more fun. It’s not that I’m looking to have my own “Bread Boss” reality TV show, it’s just that the bread in my neighborhood stinks (or costs $4 a loaf) and I have no choice but to make my own. The best bread I’ve had in this city came from Caputo’s in Brooklyn, and since I can’t cycle 8 miles in each direction just for a loaf of bread, this book will suffice.

So get yourself some bricks and cement, build yourself an oven, and bake your own. Ignore modern technology, the Romans were baking bread long before electricity, and their ovens survived the destruction of Mount Vesuvius. Occasionally, archeologists find that the actual loaves of bread survived too!