Do you mean wood stove or wood-fired stove?

I like food prepared in a regular gas oven just fine but I love my wood-fired oven for bread pizza pita etc... Because of the thick insulated walls it maintains temperature well. And can get really really hot. I have never cooked on a wood fired cookstove so can't answer questions about them.

There are tons of white bread recipes with or without milk.

My Grandma's white bread recipe does have milk, but I have many that do not, my basic white bread recipe is only flour, water, yeast and salt.

Soft white sandwich bread often has milk, which can make a softer/fluffier bread. It also has a bit of fat, which water does not have, and so the bread tastes richer.

Many old recipes for white bread call for milk, farm families had milk readily available, along with eggs, and so rich eggy breads were common to them.

I have cooked on a wood fired cookstove, and I know KatieC has one too. The wood-fired pizza/bread type ovens can reach temperatures higher than most kitchen ovens and can more easily produce the chewy/crunchy crusts that artisan breads are known for. A wood cookstove works in a similar fashion to gas or electric, but there is a learning curve. I can't tell the difference between a pot of beans on my gas stove and one on a wood stove, but baked goods sometimes have a different texture, if you fire that wood stove up.

Annie

There's also something about meats roasted in a wood stove's oven, or in a beehive. I think it's probably the same process as the crusty breads. It kind of dries and carmelizes the outside, or something, but leaves the inside tender and tasty. But I agree with Annie. Things cooked on top of a woodstove are just normal, assuming one has a feel for the temperatures. OTOH, the cast iron pans my mother used on woodstoves when I was little make the same good food on electric coils. Crappy pans take more work, or more skill, to get great food.

Wood fire generates smoke. Smoke adds flavor.

Also there may be some carbon monoxide generated, which can make the meat look prettier.

dcarch

I believe it is a memory our elders hold dear, a memory my father speaks of. He is 87 and remembers his grandmother working a wood cookstove. It has a soul, the heartbeat of a home. It takes care to cook on one, and its surface, back in the day, had cast iron dancing all over it. You need to slide your pans on and off the various heat zones. Roasts and stews and bread in and out of the oven. When your grocery was your own pantry of ball jars.

And a source of heat most of the year in colder climates. Even sumer, with windows open, it is a place to dry rainy day sox and such. Full of conversation and stories.

To dance with one takes attention and care. Allot of love comes out of the beast. So i think the memory of good food has more to do with the cook. You really need to know what you are doing....not using modern conveniences of frozen, canned, bottled, packaged foods.
Not available at the time. When that became available, (a can of cream of onion soup) etc., the 'soul' left the pot. A bag of white bread, the smell of fresh bread out of the oven no longer. A whole fish was used, the head and back for stock, a whole chicken including the paws for stock, simmering along with the evening meal prep.

Similar to the saying for gardeners, "you must talk to your plants". It just means you need to check on them briefly, daily, and make sure their needs are met.

No smoke involved. The firebox is sealed. Dampers are open and closed to allow heat to circulate certain ways...to surround the oven sealed box high or low heat or not at all. Open the oven door at night to heat the home, etc. You can even broil by having heat rage over the top by opening a top back damper. I do have a big cast iron dutch oven that is also a smoker that takes just a tbsp of wood shavings and a few green coffee beans for some contained smoke but the wood fired oven does not add any smoke itself.

I bake 2 loaves of white bread almost weekly. It's our go-to favourite. No milk. Just water, butter, salt and sugar and the proofed yeast. I made hamburger buns and one loaf of bread last time.

We cook on a wood cookstove seven or eight months out of the year. I prefer it...it's like having a giant cast iron burner that's hot on one side and warm on the other. Warming ovens are handy, too...dinner plates are stored on one side and breads and sides keep warm on the other. Baked goods tend to brown from the side and just need a quick rotation...fewer burned bottoms than in my electric oven.

Well said, Sleevendog. I think food tastes better because of that required care and attention. As you tend the fire, you also tend the food. Everyone winds up hanging in the kitchen and being involved in the process.

My mother cooked on a coal stove when we lived in Ely, Nevada. I was 9-12 years old. We had no hot running water to the house, to take a bath you hauled boiling water from the water heater hanging off of the right side of the stove to the tub and mixed it with cold water from the faucet.

My memories are of wonderful meals made on that stove! Sunday morning pancakes have never tasted better. The grill was built into the stove top. Mom cooked a lot of our meals on that flattop. The oven was huge and she baked 6 loaves of bread at a time.

In winter, that stove was the family gathering place since it was the only heat source in the house. Ely is at high altitude and it was cold! (7,000' ft, maybe). I loved the stove. Mom hated it. We called that house "Gunsmoke Alley). It was originally built, in 1887, for a family with 11 daughters. Never had a coat of paint in its life!

I like my Electrolux induction!

/tricia

This post was edited by triciae on Sun, Mar 23, 14 at 11:58

I'm not 70 yet, but I cooked for years on a Home Comfort cookstove, when we moved back to the land in the 70s. The make, style and size of the firebox makes a huge difference in the ease of cooking/baking.* Smaller stoves with small fireboxes are much trickier to bake in. My Home Comfort made the best pita bread ever.

*My article on cooking on a woodstove, written by hand for submission, was the cover article in an early issue of Mother Earth News. We didn't have electricity then either.

Thank you all so much ! I'm loving reading all of this ! And my questions are answered too ! I really appreciate all of you taking the time to answer.

I worked at a museum where I did wood stove cooking demos. The are really amazing appliances because they can do so many things at once. Bake, fry, dry, stew, etc,. all at the same time on different parts of the stove. NOT fun in the summer but in MI, that's basically three months out of the year, lol! I hate canning anyway, even on a gas or electric stove. For that I would love a canning kitchen. I would love to have a wood-fired cookstove of my own someday, but not without the kitchen and woodlot to go with it. Using cast iron cookware can go a little ways in giving you some of the heat radiating qualities of a woodstove. It's an art to cooking on one, but I love that you can always have something stewing "on the back of the stove" and not be wasting fuel since the wood stove heats as well as cooks. That's the beauty of it for a good portion of the cold months, it give you both kinds of comfort--food and heat!

L, I'm not sure we're going to get 3 months of summer this year, it's supposed to be a low of zero on Tuesday night, and we still have at least 4 feet of snow left on the ground in my front yard. Spring is slow coming and I canned 11 pints of applesauce today!

I'd love to have a good wood cookstove for my basement at the farm, when we build that, but I don't really want to cut the wood necessary to use it.

As sleevendog said, there is no smoke involved in baking in a woodstove's oven. She said it well, I think much has to do with the love and care that went into tending food and the fact that it is homemade food, not pre-made convenience items.

Annie

Now that I think about it, maybe Grandma meant in the oven part, for bread and baked beans and biscuits. She didn't eat meat or eggs so I doubt she fried anything. I never saw her drink milk, or have eggs or cake. I never saw her make anything fried.
My Grandma was a Seventh-day Adventist, and a vegetarian.

When I used to use a wood stove for baking, I found my cakes rose differently to the way they do now in the gas oven or the old electric oven I used to have. There was more of an even rise, with less spring in the centre.

I think I was thinking about open wood burning stoves. I am reading Damon Fowler's "Dining At Monticello" and "Thomas Jefferson's Monticello"

The kitchen there has all wood stoves plus cooking by the fireplace with Dutch ovens.

A very interesting 3rd President of the USA, who totally changed the way we cook today.

Here is a link that might be useful:

We have an antique Crawford Royal but the kitchen was totally renovated and with insulation and new windows, it gets too warm to do any baking. Since my mother-in-law used hers a lot, my husband wanted one, too. There's a slot at the top of the firebox which allows him to insert a grill basket for steak, chicken breasts, fish, etc. He has the fire figured just right, a good bed of coals, and does a great job of grilling.

We also heat with a wood furnace in the cellar so the stove gives some extra heat. When it's just cold in the morning we don't need to keep the wood furnace going but the stove takes the chill off the kitchen.

It's great to have the extra cooking space for big family dinners. Also, I think nothing of steaming brown bread or keeping a soup simmering because the stove is already in use. I am not using extra electricity (we have an electric stove). I use the warming shelf for yeast doughs.

I don't think food tastes different except the grilled meats. It's just nice to have the stove.

I remember when my grandparents moved into town & a house with an electric stove. My grandmother never stopped complaining about that electric stove, said she just couldn't cook a decent meal on it & nothing tasted right. I couldn't tell any difference, although I think she did tend to burn things on the cooktop more. She complained about the cooktop as much as the oven tasting "off", although that never made sense to me.

NGraham,

I wonder if the difference in your grandmother's cooking was actually the water?

You know, like how they say you can't get a good bagel or pizza outside of New York because the water's different? Some people can't really tell the difference, or are more adaptable to variations in flavor, but some people just have that one specific taste in mind that comes from the water.

I was glad my mother showed me a bit about cooking with a woodstove when I was a kid. When I moved into this house with the unregulated gas oven. It had hot and cold spots, and didn't have temperatures that were consistent with the dial. That is, the same number meant different things on different days. So just like my mother, I stuck my arm in to judge the temperature and just worked with it. Worst oven ever but I managed to cook things. Everything came out fine except for a couple of cakes, which were dry. :) OTOH, I don't remember anything about how to lay a good fire...

I would love to have the kind of water my grandmother must have had. She was born and grew up in the redwood trees, in Eureka, California, 1897.
For some cooking I use bottled water, as our tap water is all fluoride, chlorine and who knows what else.

Laying a fire is such fun, although I don't know if I would think that if I had to do it every day. And I was so wrong, you can't bake and fry at the same time, the frying fire is going to be way too hot. But not for long, lol! Frying is actually one of the hardest things to do because you have to keep stoking the fire. I used to take the pates right off the burners to try and get a good fry, but I was using mostly cast iron I think. If you tried to bake and fry at the same time your stuff might come out lopsided! Plus you'd be so busy messing with wood that your cake might burn. Well at least if you are me, lol! But braising and simmering--oh yeah!