I must admit I am behind the curve in construction but plan to recomitt this spring.

To all bread lovers, you might wish to beg for the dutch oven bread, Leslie makes. It is beyond belief.

Steve Balme

The French Canadians used clay to make both the floor and walls of their bread ovens. Since we used cement we tried it that way first, just baking on the cement. It worked, but not as well as we thought it should, so we obtained some 1″ thick fire bricks and paved floor of the oven with those. They are somewhat porous so are good at holding some water when the oven is swabbed out. Being light in weight and color I thought they might be made of pumice. Info on the net however indicated that are probably made with aluminum oxide. They work very well.

On the net I also found suggestions from other oven builders who used red fire bricks. Whichever ones you choose, there seem to be many outlets that come up with a ‘fire brick’ Google search.

Let us know which way you decide to go and how it all turns out.

Thanks,
Bill

I am glad you all enjoyed the post on our ovens.
Paul, thanks for the heads-up on the Denzer book. At only $19 it looks like a great buy. And luck to both you and Nico this summer with yur plans to construct an oven.

Anne, In my bread oven files is an Autumn 1989 issue of Simple Cooking (John Thorne editor) in which a small indoor brick oven from Oven Crafters (Tomales California)was featured. In this same issue the advantages of using a Superstone LaCloche stoneware baking dome to achieve results similar to those produced by a wood-fired oven was also discussed. Simple Cooking continues on as a web site and blog http://www.outlawcook.com/ where you may be able to ask about these home friendly items.

Bill

Thanks for another great article.

Kiko Denzer http://www.intabas.com/kikodenzer.html wrote a great book on building clay ovens. I highly recommend it. I plan on using the plans (or some derivative there of) when I build my clay oven with my boys this summer.

Cheers,

Paul

I am so excited about this project! Cannot wait for the snow to clear and the temperature to rise so that we can begin building our own wood oven down east!

If you find yourself awanderin’ down the coast, do stop in at Sargentville.

And thanks, again, for all this information.

We’d love to see you…

All best,
Nico Jenkins