Introduction and Fire

    I want to experiment with how far I can take a wood-burning oven.  I already know that it makes the best pizza and works perfectly for roasting corn, but will it bake cakes?  Will it ruin puff-pastry?  Can I use it like a crock-pot, letting the warmed bricks slowly release heat into a pan? Today, however, the first order of business was actually starting a fire in the oven.  A wood-burning oven is not something you simply walk out into the backyard and use.  You have to start the fire in the morning, allow it to heat the firebricks through, then push the coals to the back and clean the ash away before you can start cooking.  And despite the fact that I helped build the oven, from the ground up, and have cooked in it a multitude of times before, I have never actually had to build the fire and judge when the oven was ready to be used.  So I gathered up the wood; logs, kindling, an old phonebook, and the matches and approached the oven, with our dog running in circles around my legs and hoping I would throw her Frisbee.      I know the basic principles of building a fire and halfway attempted to follow them, as I thrust my upper body partially into the oven for a better reach, trying to avoid acquiring a dusting of soot in my hair from the ceiling.  Then I began waving a lit match next to the crumpled papers, forgetting to start in the back and then having to twist awkwardly to avoid burning my wrist on the rising flames as I reached deeper into the oven.  The papers burned merrily, some of them sparking green.  I watched hopefully, silently asking the sticks to catch fire, and then a few scant minutes later was  left with charred black flakes, edged with orange, and an unburnt pile of logs.  For the second attempt, I gathered up more twigs, smaller branches, and pulled the larger logs out.  Maybe I had intimidated the small fire with such large pieces of fuel.  This time, the wood did catch, and I uncurled my numbing fingers and rushed back into the house, where I could watch the smoke rise from the comfort of the warm kitchen. 
    For the next two hours, I kept the fire burning, then I used a laser thermometer to check the temperature.  500 degrees Fahrenheit.  I let the fire die out as quickly or slowly as it wanted to, going back to check the temperature of the bricks one more time.  Two hours after the fire had burned away, it was still 325 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that I will mostly likely need quite often in my experiments.  And it only took four hours to get it there.  So, now I know what needs to be done to prepare the oven for the first test, which will come sometime next week.
    I wonder why it is that next time I will see if I can get my brother to build the fire for me.  It isn't that I don't know how to do it, because I just did.  In fact, I get a feeling of satisfaction from being able to build a fire that can be sustained, that will serve a purpose, be it for cooking or for heating the house.  When confronted with the building of a fire, however, I always have a feeling of apprehension.  Going through the culinary arts program and even cooking day to day at home, I have burned myself repeatedly.  Sometimes the burns are small, sometimes more serious, but they don't bother me.  I don't think I have ever burned myself on open flame, though, more often it's a pan I've forgotten was hot, or spilled boiling liquid.  Why, then, is there this fear of fire?  It is entrancing to watch, contained in the oven, but I instinctively avoid getting too close to it.  Perhaps it is the very characteristic that makes it so interesting to look at, its unpredictability, combined with its ability to unmake anything too near it, from logs to plastic utensils, that makes me shy away from it at the same time being drawn towards it.