← Grain, flour and bread H45-04 · Module 4 of 7 · Pages: 19 · Worksheets: 5

Baking under a sač and in a bread oven

How to heat the hearth and the sač, bake bread, pogača and pita under embers, and how to fire a bread oven, read its heat without a thermometer and use it to the last

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Baking under a sač and in a bread oven

In short

  • The sač and hearth heat together for 45–60 min; a 1 kg loaf bakes under the embers in 40–60 min.
  • A bread oven is fired for 1.5–3 hours until the dome turns white, then the embers come out, the floor is cleaned and the oven rests 20–30 min.
  • For bread the floor is roughly 230–260 °C (450–500 °F): flour thrown on it darkens in 10–15 seconds.
  • One firing: flatbreads, bread, pies, beans, fruit drying, in that order, as the oven cools.
  • Burn only dry, clean wood. Embers go in a metal bin with a lid, and an indoor hearth only with a sound chimney and a CO alarm.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. The sač, the crepulja and the bread oven
  2. The hearth and safety
  3. Firewood and embers
  4. Bread under a sač step by step
  5. The bread oven: how it is built
  6. Firing a bread oven
  7. How to measure the heat
  8. Baking bread in the bread oven
  9. The order of one firing
  10. Maintenance and repairs
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Sač and bread oven calendar
  • Bread and firewood calculator
  • Baking-day plan
  • Firing log
  • Oven and hearth sketch

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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