Macarons..

I am joining the growing number of people pre-occuppied with French Macarons.  Now, I have seen them in pictures and on television, and have now attempted them three times. See below:

I have not been happy with any of these attempts, although the second picture (third attempt), was much more successful (next time I will pipe the filling onto the macaron. )  I used this recipe from 'my food geek' which I highly recommend as it uses Italian meringue which seems to give more lift to the macarons.  The macarons I made were raspberry and white chocolate, and orange and chocolate.. However, living in Alice Springs, I am still not sure what they should taste like, ie. have I been successful.. I need to compare them with something other than an image...  I need to know whether or not the macaron  should be a bit chewy, or dry and crunchy... and how important is that gloss, not to mention colour.

Well... in a fortnight I am going to, not to Paris, but to Melbourne (for work), and I have set myself the task and seeking out, and buying, and tasting the best macaron that Melbourne can provide - and taking photos of course.

Sourdough #1 in pizza oven

I tried my first sourdough batch in my pizza oven last week... I worked out all the timings.  Started feeding the sourdough on the Friday, made the dough and knocked it back a couple of times on the Saturday, created three batards on Saturday night (technique thanks to youtube) which sat in the fridge overnight, and then Sunday morning... well things fell apart.  The air temperature was over 20 degrees (more like 30) and I took the loaves out of the fridge too early, and then the pizza oven wasn't ready... so I knocked them back.  Got the pizza oven to the right temperature with the help of  my new laser thermometer, sprayed the interior with water and placed an oven tray full of wet rags in the back of the oven, and then placed my batards in the oven.  Twelve to fifteen minutes later I checked them out and was..... disappointed... same old, same old sour dough. No caramel top or large gaps of stretched dough.. none of that special wood fire taste and texture I was hoping for.

What did I do wrong?  What will I do next time?

Next time, I will use a strong (possibly not organic), high protein flour.

I will use small pieces of wood which will burn quickly (rather than the large logs of gum I used this time)  and make a mother of a fire in my pizza oven.

And, I will use my new hose wand to get more water/steam into my oven...

That's about it.