My last post described how Portuguese Sweet Yeast Bread dough is shaped into rolls at the Kona Historical Society’s stone oven (forno) on Hawaii’s Big Island. Baker Lewis Draxlir and his wife, Carla, are masters at the task. The photo above shows the shaped rolls in the pan, and here’s a video showing how Lewis does it. As the rolls rise under a towel, Lewis sweeps the ash out of the oven. This is a messy task and he wears a mask so that he doesn’t inhale the dust. Here’s what the inside of the oven looks like as the last of the ashes are swept out. Now to the baking. Once the rolls have risen, they’re brushed with an egg glaze before going into the oven. The darker rolls are made with half whole wheat flour.
The first pans go into the oven when the temperature is close to 500 degrees. Carla sets a pan of rolls on Lewis’s baker’s peel and he slides the pan in quickly. They work together at a rapid pace to get the pans into the oven as quickly as possible without losing too much oven heat. After about 20 minutes the rolls are done and Lewis slides the pans out as fast as he can and he and Carla reload the oven lickety split. By this time the oven heat is around 400 degrees and the second batch of rolls takes a few minutes longer to bake.
Bread has an aroma like nothing else, and just before the rolls come out of the oven they perfume the air with their alluring aroma. I just want to eat one right away! When the rolls come out they are a gorgeous deep golden brown and they have an irresistibly sweet, inviting yeasty smell. Lewis cuts into a few so that we can taste them within minutes of baking. The rolls are dense, sweet, and buttery and are very easy to eat. We helpers get first crack at buying the rolls at $7 a pan. What we don’t buy gets moved up to the highway, and within a couple of hours all the rolls will have disappeared into the hands of passersby.
Okay. Enough said. Now go bake.