Your Brick Oven or Casual Vineyard Table

Your Brick Oven: Building It and Baking In It

Author: Russell Jeavons

Since 1992 Russell Jeavons has owned and cooked at a unique restaurant in an old cottage in one of South Australia's prized wine districts. It is famous in part because it's only open on Friday nights, but moreso for its fresh, simple food cooked entirely in Russell's wood-fired brick ovens. His pizzas are renowned throughout Australia, with fine regional ingredients artfully combined atop classic, thin, wood-oven cooked crusts. Russell's Pizza is the kind of place where friends and family gather to eat within sight of the golden, glowing kitchen; where the garden is equipped with warming braziers and outdoor fire pits for chatting, relaxing, and munching. It is an atmosphere that many of us covet for our own homes—an outdoor space where we can come together on cool nights for warmth, fun, and good food. The first part of Your Brick Oven is a step-by-step guide that takes readers through the stages of building an oven, from choosing the site to firing up for the first bake. Part two explains how to cook in the oven with invaluable tips for brick oven cooks, with recipes for sour dough bread, thin-crust pizzas, traditional roasts, fruit tarts, and sinful cakes and pastries.

Library Journal

Inspired by customers' comments on the brick oven he keeps at his restaurant in Australia, Jeavons has written a book that demonstrates how readers can build a similar oven themselves. The instructions are pretty basic and include variations catering to different people's needs and numerous line drawings. Jeavons's passion for baking is infectious; he even shares some of his favorite recipes to help readers get the feel of their new ovens. There's just one drawback: the book was not edited for an American audience; measurements are all in metric, with incomplete conversion charts. Much more lightweight than Daniel Wing and Alan Scott's The Bread Builders, this is recommended for larger public libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

See also: Southern Cook Book of Fine Old Recipes or Sugar Pie and Jelly Roll

Casual Vineyard Table

Author: Carolyn Went

CAROLYN WENTE is the president of Wente Vineyards, California's oldest family-owned and continuously family-operated winery. She learned the wine business from her father and grandfather. Born and raised in Livermore, California, she lives there with her husband and son.KIMBALL JONES has been the executive chef of Wente Vineyards since 1989. A graduate of the California Culinary Academy, he lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and two sons.