Here the typical kitchen has a
two burner gas stove and that is it!
Last month the family’s stove only had one working burner. Thankfully it has been fixed and there are
now two burners. On top of that they bought
an oven while we were away. Now, not an
oven life you might be thinking. It is
an aluminum box that sits right on top of one of the burners. It has a nice glass window in the door and
holes to open and close on the top.
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| The kitchen stove and work space. I did most of the dough prep on the dinning room table. |
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| The oven! This is the 2nd smallest of 4 sizes you can buy. |
Saturday we went out with the
specific purpose of finding yeast to make bread in the yet to be used
oven.
Third time is a charm because only
at the third
convenience like store did we find yeast.
Flour on the other hand was not a
problem.
Upon coming home we started the
bread right away.
This was my first time
using an oven like this.
When it was
time to bake the bread I wearily placed the oven on a burner and turned the
burner on.
The instructions were lost so
we were all flying blind.
I had heard the
hottest ovens such as these get is 350-375 F, so I closed the door
and the small
holes on top, then let it be for 10 minutes or so.
Then we placed two loaves of bread, side by
side on a cookie sheet, into the oven.
About 20 minutes into the cooking time we heard a crash in the
kitchen.
The glass in the oven door had
broke.
Thankfully no one had been in the
kitchen at the time and the glass fell out of the oven so the bread was
ok.
But now we had two half cooked
loaves in an oven basically without a door.
The mom figured we could just
continue cooking the loaves as is, so we
did and THANKFULLY we ate bread that night!
There were many hypothesis as to what happened.
First it was said the holes on the top
shouldn’t have been completely closed as it must have gotten too hot
inside.
The next thought was it must
have been the inch or so of dough that was touching the glass, thus putting
pressure on it.
It was the strangest
experience and I felt terrible the first time the oven was used, I broke it.
I still hold to the thought there must have
been a flaw in the glass as the oven was new and is made, supposedly, to get hot
enough to enable baking.
Sunday the dad got a piece of
glass cut to fit the door and it was like new again.
So, after going to the market for
ingredients, I taught them how to make pizza.
It only took 3 ½ hours as we had to make the sauce from scratch, only
small pizzas would fit, and the holes on the top of the oven where kept open in
hopes of not breaking the window again.
In the end we were so hungry the pizza tasted pretty good.
Most of the ingredients can be found here in
Barat, except cheese.
Ok, there is
cheese, but it is Kraft, highly processed cheese, sold off the shelf,
not from the refrigerated section, and it does not melt.
When the pizza was done Caedmon looked at it
and asked, “Why did you put noodles on it?”
I did agreed to have corn be put on it (very common here, even at Pizza
Hut in the big city), but not noodles, it was just the cheese!
Maybe some day we can introduce them to home
made pizza with real mozzarella (found in the big city).
In the meantime I will continue baking!
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| Caedmon, the oldest daughter, Whitman and a friend playing while waiting for pizza. |
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| Pizza already cooked. |
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| Eating Pizza! |
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| Our one cheese option. |
