Backyard Bread Oven
(Page 3 of 4)
November/December
Cathy Wilson
The second layer
RELATED CONTENT
A recipe for bread that can be baked in an outdoor, adobe cooker....
Wealth of bean varieties helps keep this nutritional wonder on everyone's table....
National Chicken Cooking Contest showcases the best chicken recipes the country has to offer....
Technology to nurture the caveperson within....
The hottest trend in cookware goes back thousands of years....
Mix adobe for the second layer as before, but add some chopped straw to it, to hold it together and help prevent severe cracking. Chop your straw with a weed-whacker in a wheelbarrow or trash barrel and mix the chopped straw into your adobe as you make it. The second layer is built just like the first, up and over. Use the 2-by-4 to rock over the form once more (see Figure 3).
Finishing touch
Mix up some wet, soft adobe, using more clay than sand and very finely chopped straw, which you make by running the weed-whacker longer in the straw in your container. If you have some pretty clay, perhaps red, use it for your plaster. Enjoy spreading it evenly over the entire surface of your oven.
Open the door
In North America, traditional ovens tend to have doors that are 63 percent of the height of the oven’s interior, so multiply the height of the dome by 0.63 and cut your door that high, using a large kitchen knife. (Be sure to make it wide enough to allow convenient access.) Remove the sand, using a trowel and your hands. Gently scrape the sand from all the interior surfaces and brush it off the brick floor (see Figure 4).
Close the door
Trace the shape of your oven’s opening on a piece of paper, and cut a piece of wood to fit the shape. It doesn’t have to be perfect but try to get it close. Fashion a handle from a scrap piece of wood or buy one and attach it to the door.
Let it dry
It can take weeks for your oven to dry, but you can speed the process by building small fires to help it along. Some cracking is to be expected during this process and as you use the oven, bit if large cracks develop, fill them with damp clay.
Now, bake some bread!
Light a large fire built with sticks and small pieces of wood inside the oven. When it dies down, build another. Continue this process for about three hours. While it is heating, make your dough.
Any good bread recipe will work in your adobe oven. (See Adobe Bread Recipe for one suggestion.) Use an oil-free recipe for a crispy, European crust. Let the bread rise, punch down, and form into round or long loaves. For the final rising, place loaves on cornmeal-covered cookie sheets.
Remove all the ashes and unburned wood from the oven. Nail or screw a rag to a stick, wet the rag, and “scuffle” out the bricks so they’re clean. Let the oven sit or “soak” for about 10 minutes. Wet an old piece of towel and wrap the door with the towel inside. In a few minutes, remove the door and towel.