Brick oven on the shore

Welcome to the food blog for our community brick oven on the shore of Lake Superior! This hopefully will be a way for us to share successes and failures...what works and what doesn't! We would like to hear about how everyone makes and then tweaks their pizza crust. For example, Bob has found that freezing the balls of dough works like magic!

But, this blog is also meant to encourage all of us to try new things. Almost anything that is done in a conventional oven can be done in the wood fired oven. (hmmm... maybe not popovers...)

Since wild blueberry season is soon upon us, we decided to start with a rustic blueberry pie. This was made with huge blueberries from Costco, but we are convinced that the small north shore blueberries we pick ourselves, have much more flavor! (You don't have to reveal your secret blueberry patches, but if you feel so inclined, we are always looking...)

Rustic Blueberry Pie

The temperature of the oven was 350 degrees, but we would recommend 450 degrees. This was baked in the afternoon after someone made pizza the night before. I believe the morning temperature would have been perfect for baking!

Pillsbury pie crust from the infamous

North Shore Market

any favorite blueberry pie recipe

...this is from Two Harbors, Betty's Pies cookbook. We used half the recipe, so 2 cups of blueberries.

Roll pie crust a bit thinner. Heap blueberry filling in the middle of the crust, leaving approximately 2-3 inches around the edge.

Beat together 1 egg and a tablespoon of water, and brush on the top of crust for a nice brown glazed finish.

Bake approximately 20-25 minutes, depending on the temperature you find the oven (: or until

crust is nicely browned, and the blueberries are bubbling!

We have no pictures of the finished product! Fortunately, Pat and Bob brought up ice cream when they saw what was cooking, and Steve and Steve happened to walk by! The pie vanished before we remembered to take a photo! This is a great example of spontaneous community time at the oven!

As long as we are talking about successes, we feel compelled to mention our failure. The second rustic pie in the oven is a strawberry-rhubarb. It look awfully good going in to the oven, but the filling ooooooozed out almost immediately. I think it was a combination of too much filling (we used a whole recipe), and the temperature was not hot enough for the crust to firm up enough to hold it. The real beauty of this, is that we did not have to clean the oven...lighting a fire took care of it, and it was ready for pizza in only two hours!

All of us will be able to post on this blog, and it will be fun to hear what is happening on the brick hearth! Don't forget to bring your cameras!