A Roof

I put this roof on, just in time since it rained most of yesterday and the forecast is for this to continue which ought to make baking bread and selling it a joy. I will be at the Farmer's Market in Chestertown on Saturday morning at any rate.
















Some tools resting in the shade of the new roof.

BREAD!

Finally some bread out of this oven!
As you can see, after being properly fired the oven has burnt all of the soot off the walls and ceiling of the oven.
(You might notice that some bricks have fallen from the ceiling, these are the keystones (!) that I made too short) but fortunately i filled the void with concrete which is acting as the keystone. I would be lying if I said this whole thing wasn't taking a few years off my life. Soon when i have a period of time when the oven is not in operation for a while (and thus cool) I will climb in and fill the rest of the void with more high temp concrete.

I made these breads in my basement "workshop" and then carried trays of the baskets (in which they were rising) up and out to the oven. The loaves I made had the same base dough (a 75/25 whole wheat dough) one with soaked mixed grains and one with raisins and walnuts.

In they went, 9 at a time, on the large peel I made, It worked wonderfully. I haven't made tools that are long enough yet to clean out all the way to the back so I put nine in and then 6 more and then two on each side with the small peel that I showed in an earlier post.
Even by the time I got to putting the final loaves in I could see that the first were springing nicely and after about 40 minutes I pulled from the oven these really beautiful loaves.































The Multigrain















The Raisin and Walnut




I don't know if it is brick oven or if it is more the idea of the brick oven but I've never made bread I thought looked nicer than these. and it was delicious. and I suppose that is, of course, because we eat not just food but ideas; and this idea is pretty tasty.

At any rate I took this bread into town and managed to sell it all in a matter of minutes.

Food!

Even while the oven was still drying out I began to put food in it:
Like this pork shoulder which I slow roasted for 6 hours and then shredded and mixed some BBQ sauce made by a friend of the family from North Carolina. As such the sauce was more a highly spiced and sweetened vinegar than what most of america thinks of as a BBQ sauce (spicy ketchup). It was delicious. The color on the pork skin was pretty awesome.

I catered this small dinner party and as part of the first course I served some flatbread that I threw in the oven while there was a fire roaring in it. It was essentially just a pizza dough stretched out into rough ovals. The hot oven puffed it up and browned it beautifully in a matter of minutes (2 or 3 I would say).

Stud Walls and Insulation

In order for the oven to work properly it needs a thick layer of insulation and in order to hold this insulation in the oven needs an exterior wall. It can be built from 4" concrete block but by building a steel stud wall with an exterior sheathing of concrete board (like drywall made of concrete) you end up with an extra 4 inches of insulation.
Steel studs are flimsy things until they all get tied together and sheathed with drywall (or concrete board). They are sort of a bitch to work with. i think I prefer wood although steel studs may be "the future of the industry."

In the front I made a little slot to put the temperature readout meter. I also had to build the face up square in order to meet the steel stud walls flush. I also spent this time corbelling the chimney back and in due time I will mortar on a 8" insulated flue pipe which will take the chimney through the roof of the shed that will cover the oven and the adjacent rooms.

The next step was to fill all that space with vermiculite. Vermiculite is a mineral that, when heated, will expand into little puffy worm shaped rice krispie looking things (worms=verm-). It is used most commonly to condition soils. It loosens up heavy clay soils and retains water in sandy soils. Becuase it is so light weight it also makes a great loose fill insulation and is fireproof and so can get hot where it touches the oven cladding without burning up. At first I though 20 bags would do the trick but I ended up needing 5 more and at $18 a bag this was not so cheap.

So now on to the baking!

The First Fire

After a few days of gentle space heater heat i figured it was time to up the ante and light some small fires to get things going. Very exciting!
My first thoughts were "it works!" but then again I could also light a fire on the ground.
The chimney (stubby as it may yet be) draws the smoke well provided there is no draft across the front of the chimney (more reason for a building asap).

The Curing Begins

So the curing process takes a while. If you heat up the oven too fast while it is still wet the water can expand explosively and crack the bricks, at least that is what i imagine might happen. For the first 3-4 days I put a little space heater in the oven which warmed up the surface of the bricks and got rid of some of that moisture. In the mean time I set about doing some things that needed to be done.

My dad had been working on a design for the bakery building but we continued to disagree (civilly) and so i decided to design it. It'll be simple, just a building to keep out the weather while I bake bread.

I also have been building some tools to use in the oven. Some of these just consisted of taking short handled tools that I already had and putting long handles on them (usually old shovel handles). but in the case of the peel I made it all from wood I found in the basement.





This peel is for loading bread into the sides of the oven after a larger peel (which I will be making soon) loads bread into the bulk of the oven. They are a bit bulky but sturdy and will no doubt make me strong.

Arch Cladding

So I had to wait to do this final pour until i could get some help and it seemed to be scarce but eventually i did find some help and managed to pour the top cladding in less than 4 hours. This was the biggest pour yet and was exhausting but then it was done and with it the oven is functionally finished meaning that at this point the dry out procedure begins and the only remaining step is to build a wall around it and fill the void with loose vermiculite as insulation. The oven will work at this point (after curing) just not efficiently. There is of course a lot of "pretty work" to do, unless I want to retain the rustic appeal of concrete block.

The arches covered with foil ready for the pour. The foil breaks the bond between the arches and the cladding so that there is some freedom of movement when heat makes things expand.




The finished arch cladding.