Earth Oven, Phase 7: Patching up, and Pizza

The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! The oven mud could have been more clay-ey, but most of the oven has held up well. Not so the part that wasn’t as compacted (it being over the 0pening)  and …

Gorgeous Day for Baking Cookies

“Mama, can we bake cookies?” Because I suspected that the oven is still too wet to retain enough heat, we put the cookie tray right on the coals (which is cheating, really). The thermometer went up to 400 and then freaked out.   Cookies came out a little burned but nice and smoky! Steam rising …

Earth Oven, Phase 6: Insulating Layer and Chimney

The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Advice for the novice bricklayer: when building an arch, when done, remove supports and then let cement dry. You guessed it, when removing the supports under my hastily built arch, the …

Earth Oven, Phase 5: First Drying Fire and Door Arch

The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Today we dug out the sand form. We peeled off the newspaper and checked out the surface on the inside. It’s pretty smooth. After that, we lit a fire, just a small …

Earth Oven, Phase 4: Thermal Mass

The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Today we worked on the oven again. Rain threatened but never materialized. It made for a warm, overcast day, just perfect for some more or less hard outdoor work. First we …