Outdoor pizza

Sunday was another bright clear day in Seattle. The rain will return tomorrow. I baked the loaf of bread I prepared yesterday and made pizza from the refreshed sourdough starter.

In the afternoon, we dragged three kids out of the house for a walk in the daylight. Rachel stayed home to work on homework. Eric really didn't want to go. We walked to the mailbox on Tenth Ave, and then around and up through the cemetery. I found a small shriveled quince on a bush and tried to give it to Eric, but he didn't want it. However, when we arrived at the edge of the cemetery, he did acquiesce to throwing it in the bushes. It seemed like he threw it through the bushes, though, so we decided to look for it on the other side. That finally seemed to get his mind off his complaints.

All the mountains were visible today. We could see the Olympics to the west, the Cascades to the east, and the very top of Mt Baker to the north. It took some searching to figure out where the quince had come through, but we did find it in the grass eventually. The cemetery walk was otherwise uneventful.

I started up the pizza oven again and made five pizzas. I used the same amount of dough I usually make into three, but they were still a little too big. I think the pizza stone inside the oven also wasn't all the way hot when I started, and I probably didn't leave quite enough time between pizzas. Still, they turned out pretty well, with room for improvement as we learn what we're doing. The logistics are very different from using the electric oven, so we'll have to start from scratch to make it more efficient.

The crust expands quite a lot in that heat. I'm looking forward to trying it out for baguettes, too.