Best Oven Size

Unfortunately there is no best oven size. The size oven you build should relate to what you are going to use the oven for. The two primary uses of wood-fired ovens are bread baking and pizza baking.
If your oven is used just for bread baking, then you can build it fairly small. For pizza making, you'll have to make it bigger even if you're making only one pizza at a time.
A pizza needs to be moved around in the oven so that it will bake evenly and it takes space to do this.
I recently made some pizzas in a 16.5" X 30"and I had a hard time. The length was fine, but the width was not. There was simply no way to maneuver the pizza around.
At home in my 32" diameter, round earth oven, I build a fire one side of the oven and bake on the other side. When the floor cools off, with my metal peel, I simple move the fire and coals to other side of the oven and bake where the fire used to be. Depending on how many pizzas I want to bake, I might move the fire back and forth several times.
With this technique, I can maintain a 700ºF floor temperature, and this is an ideal temperature for making pizzas.
If it's just breads you're baking, and assuming you aren't making more than four breads at a time, you can get by with a smaller oven because once you place the breads in the oven to bake, you shouldn't need to shuffle them around.
If you're going to be baking breads and pizzas (of course, never at the same time) then build a larger oven.

                                   

16.5" floor diameter. Much too narrow for pizza baking                                    

                                    

 28" floor diameter. Plenty of room for pizza baking

                                         

Finishing An Oven

Fernand Toucourt, the stone mason, finishes an oven in France

                                    

Applying mortar between the stones that form the arch

                                    

Stucco over perlite insulation

 Smoothing the cement stucco

Roofing

Unless you live in a very dry climate, you really need a roof to protect your earth oven. In the past I've used surface bonding cement as a stucco over the earth oven, but it is simply not 100 percent effective.
And you are looking for 100 percent effectiveness. 95 percent is not good enough. One small crack can allow in enough moisture to turn your earth oven back to its source. Mud.
I assure you that you'll sleep better if your earth oven is properly protected.
I know some people who toss the blue tarp over their earth ovens, but they admit to me that sometime they forget and if it rains...
There are many ways of covering an earth oven with a roof, but the easiest way I've found is to buy a length of metal roofing, cut it to size and drape it over the oven. It will probably cost less than $30.00, and your oven will then be protected from the elements. A worthy investment.

cracks in surface bonding cement

cracks in surface bonding cement

 Draping metal roofing over earth oven

 roofing secured with bungies

May 18, 2013 Workshop

And yet another wonderful workshop with a great group of participants. Building an oven under a clear sky with blazing sunshine was a joy. Wood-fired pizza for lunch with a little red wine, not bad, not bad at all.                                
                                                                  Photos by Ken Taylor

Oven Workshop

Just finished an earth oven workshop with Roy Feihel and Melissa Hunnibel assisting me. While watching a couple of instructional videos I could see a driving rain outside, but as soon as we began the oven, the rain stopped. Building ovens in the rain is a demanding process, although we did have two canopies set up. The oven we constructed has an 18" diameter baking surface.
Next Saturday we'll be doing another workshop.

Bread Earth And Fire: Earth Ovens And Artisan Breads

For the past couple of years I've been revising my book "Bread Earth And Fire"
The book is being retired, and in its place is
"Bread Earth And Fire: Earth Ovens And Artisan Breads" with new material to help beginning oven builders and bread bakers.
The book is available on Lulu as a physical book and ebook. Soon to be available on Amazon's CreateSpace. Cover design may vary.

Oven Possibilities

I still continue to be amazed by the wood-fired ovens people build. There really is no right or wrong way to do it. No matter how you put it together, the odds are very much in your favor that your oven will work. Certainly you'll learn from the experience, and if you build a second oven, the chances are that it will be different from your first oven.
Check out the video 
What I find most interesting about the video is that the oven is totally uninsulated, and probably the builder had reasons for not insulating, but I can't think of any. My feeling is that no matter what type of oven you choose to build, an insulated oven will mean less firewood you'll have to burn and better bread.

Walter Lane's Biscuits

WALTER LANE’S BISCUITS                                     

Walter Lane was one of the subjects of a documentary film I made with Richard Searls, and this recipe is not unique, but Walter’s baking method was most unusual and resourceful. 

Walter Lane was always baking biscuits in a stovepipe contraption that he constructed above the oven in his trapper's shack. The stovepipe compartment, where the biscuits were placed to bake, captured waste heat from his woodstove. There was no way he'd allow heat to escape up the chimney without putting it to good use first. Walter was the ultimate recycler. 

The pipe oven shown is quite a pricey affair, but Walt was able to fabricate something similar for just a few dollars.

YIELD: 6-8 biscuits

INGREDIENTS:                                                                                                                                 

2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder

2 cups all-purpose, unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold butter (1stick)

1 cup (approx) buttermilk or regular milk

PROCEDURE:

Biscuits require a hot oven. Fire your oven well in advance; because once you blend your ingredients, you can bake immediately. There’s no waiting for anything to mature or rise.

In a medium-sized bowl, thoroughly blend the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and the salt. Now cut in the cold butter. This means placing small chunks of cold butter on the flour and working it into the flour with a pastry cutter, a fork, or your fingers. After the butter is carefully blended into the dry ingredients, stir in the milk. For biscuits, less stirring is better than more. The texture should be slightly gloppy. Add slightly more or less flour or milk to achieve the proper consistency.

Into a cast iron skillet, drop 1/4 cup scoops of your mixture. Slide the biscuits into the oven, keeping the fire to the back or sides. Move the skillet around to get the biscuits to bake evenly. Serve hot with butter and jam, and try not to think about your arteries. You can always leave the butter out of the ingredients, but they won’t be as good.

                                                                

                       Still image from the movie Dead River Rough Cut                                                     A biscuit lured this gorby bird (Canada jay) to Walt's hand.

Richard and I have been selling DVD's of Dead River Rough Cut for a number of years, but recently we've also allowed instant viewing of the movie from our website. Yes, this is a commercial, but if you decide to watch the movie, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

To watch a preview and view the movie, go here: www.deadriverroughcut.com

Workshops Added

 Earth Oven/Bread Baking Workshops

May 11, 2013
I've just added another workshop on May 18, 2013.
Both of these workshops will be held in Waterville, Maine.
July 25-26, 2013 at The Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine

Rethinking the Mini-Oven

My 32” diameter earth oven is really too big for just one or two loaves, and at this time, that’s all I really care to bake. Doing very many more would really take up took much kitchen space that I share. Someday perhaps, I’ll have a bakehouse.
Anyway, it’s difficult to get just one or two loaves to bake properly because there is not really enough steam produced by just one or two loaves to help create great crusts. Even using my large sprayer doesn’t help that much.
The breads that I bake indoors “undercover” are definitely much more aesthetically desirable. I think I’ll try to bake “undercover” in my earth oven and see how that works out.
The mini-oven is something I’ve only built in workshops for demonstration purposes, but perhaps I’ve underestimated it’s potential. Really, there is only room for a tiny pizza with the fire in back, but perhaps the mini-oven should be used to bake one or two loaves of bread. Baguettes might be just the thing because they don’t have much mass and should bake quickly.
I hope to try this out very soon.

Mini-oven sandwiched between two larger ovens.