Backyard Bread Oven
(Page 2 of 4)
November/December
Cathy Wilson
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You will build your oven’s fires on a layer of firebrick. Place the bricks on the sand and kiss them together, tapping with a rubber mallet to straighten. If they don’t go down perfectly, just pick them up and try again. On our oven, we elected to cover the whole top of the foundation with firebrick.
Domes made of sand
Our base was about 4-feet square, so we used a string and pencil to scribe a 28-inch-diameter circle for the inside of the oven and a 42-inch-diameter circle for the outside. You will want to adjust those values somewhat if your base has different dimensions than ours. Just be sure to leave enough space to allow 7-inch-thick walls on your completed oven (see Figure 2).
Shape a lovely dome with wet sand and be sure that it fits inside the smaller of the two circles. Take your time to make it gorgeous, and spray lightly to keep the sand wet. This shape will create the interior of your oven. Before you go on to the next step, measure the exact height of the dome and make a note of it. You will need this figure later.
Play in the mud
The ideal mud mixture for an adobe oven is 25 percent clay and 75 percent sand. Shovel three measures of sand onto a tarp and add a single measure of clay initially. If your clay consists of a clay/soil mix, add proportionally more to the sand. Mix the materials together thoroughly – we used our bare feet. Periodically pick up the corners of the tarp and roll the adobe to the center and mix again. Continue adding and mixing components until the proportions look and feel right. You should be able to hear the sand “bite” as you roll the mud in your hand. Periodically test the mud by making a golf-ball-sized sphere and dropping it from your waist onto a hard surface. If it breaks apart, the mud is too dry, if it flattens significantly, it is too wet. Add small amounts of water or clay/sand to correct for high or low moisture content.
The first layer
Place brick-sized lumps (approximately 3 inches wide) of adobe around your dome, building up as you go. After completing one row, add another right on top of it. Continue until you have completely covered the sand dome with a 3-inch thick coating of mud (see Figure 3). If the adobe slumps some during the process, use an old knife and slice off the excess adobe on the bottom. Use a short piece of 2-by-4 to “rock” over your adobe to smooth and adjust any distortions in the form.
Let the first adobe layer set overnight. If it stiffens up nicely, you should cut the door before building the second layer. If it is still quite soft, you can wait until the second layer is done to cut the door. If the mud seems too soft and wet, your mix may need more clay. For our oven, we realized our mix was not drying hard and it needed clay, so we pulled the whole thing off and remixed the adobe. It was an easy fix.