Spot the chicken. They are jungle fowl after all. Amie to the rescue. And after that, we had dinner. And then dessert.
Category Archives: Earth Oven
Earth Oven, Phase 11: Pizza
Today we fired up the oven again and made pizza. We just wanted pizza so didn’t add the rocket stove to the mix for baking. We found a good routine that doesn’t involve rushing. We burned a small fire for about 45 minutes, which was sufficient to bring the baking stone up to 850F: perfect …
Earth Oven, Phase 10: Rocket Stove!
Yesterday we built the rocket stove extension to our earth oven. The idea is to keep on pumping in heat after the fire in the oven has burned down to coals and you rake it aside to start cooking, and also to have more control over the temperature. For the bottom part we just did …
Earth Oven Phase 9: Rebuild, Better
We demolished the Earth Oven because the inner earth layer was dropping too much dust and too many chunks into the food – we dubbed that “mushroom and mineral pizza”. There wasn’t enough clay in the mixture: too much sand. We saved and kept separate the two layers, bought 50 lbs moist potter’s clay and …
This is What I Did Yesterday
We got started on rebuilding the earth oven – we demolished the first try a month ago. Again we had friends helping and there was lots of talking while having fun. All limbs were put to work on mixing the clay with the earth.
Earth Oven Phase 8: Demolition Work
Yesterday was a good work day. Not oppressively hot and humid like earlier in the week, but just right for some demolition work. As we used our earth oven, it became more and more clear that the earth we used was not clayish enough. As a result, chunks of earth and earth dust kept falling …
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) Â and …
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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. Â 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 …
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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 …
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