Friday, May 16, 2008

Bread Oven Kosovo

The bread oven is intact. Years of war destroyed most of the farmstead. It's not hard to see everything riddled by gunfire.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Stone and Brick Work

I can't quite figure out how the baker can reach up to the oven opening. Maybe the grade level is to be raised, but then the wood storage space would be lost.
It's also hard not to notice the unusual stone work. For absolute rigidity, note the keystone in the arch.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Earth Oven Slide Show

"The missing keystone, the bane of our efforts. We spent the better part of a day trying in vain to chisel or crack a brick into the appropriate shape. Turns out that bricks aren't particularly easy to cut cleanly, except maybe with a masonry saw (which we did not have). In the end, we took two sort of okay-sized chunks, jammed them in there, and hoped the mortar would hold it together. It more or less did, but it looks kind of kludgy and gap-toothed."

Excellent slide show with lots of detail. As you will see, building what appears to be a simple brick arch, turned out to be not so simple.

Bread Oven Argentina
Interesting oven. the core of which appears to be a steel drum, and I like the way the drum has been hinged to fashion a door. The firebox is under the oven, and the outside is covered with mud, presumably for insulation. The baking chamber is shelved, allowing for lots of stuff to be baked simultaneously.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Brick and Mud Oven
Using bricks to create an earth oven (maybe it's no longer an earth oven) will without doubt, increase its lifespan. If you look at the photo, you can easily imagine a simple plywood form to containing the bricks while building, and the mortar between the bricks is probably not made with cement. It looks like adobe to me. Because of the configuration, there is a chance the keystone brick could drop down. The woman applying the skin over the bricks is most likely not using cement either, because if she were, she would be injuring her hands.
The oven opening is unnecessarily large and would lead to oven inefficiencies. Maybe the finished oven will have a smaller opening.

Community Bread Ovens
Albany, New York
The three stone opening looks very rugged. If anything got damaged, it would be the bread peel, not the oven opening. Probably the base should have been wider because the oven gives the appearance that it might topple.
Humphrey, New York
An oven made with mud, top to bottom is more difficult to cover than an oven with just a mud dome. There is simply more to cover to protect from the elements.

I like the way the chimney is integrated with the rest of the oven.
Go here to see a small slide show:

Hairy Oven Style
I really like the look of this oven, but I think it can be potentially dangerous. I've never seen an earth oven that did not develop cracks, and through these cracks hot gases could potentially start the outside of the oven ablaze. The oven also appears to be too close to a wooden structure.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Bread Oven Cyprus

Bread Ovens and Music Guatemala

Two wood-fired bread ovens, designed by Pat Manley and made for the humanitarian organization Safe Passage

Truly a remarkable country. Check out the street musicians.

Just returned from Guatemala where a group of us constructed energy efficient wood-burning stoves for Maya families.
The bread of choice in Guatemala is still tortillas, and the Maya women can make them with their eyes closed. I tried to make tortillas, but I kept my eyes open, and everyone had a good laugh.

Joe Godfrey inspects an oven that he and Pat Manley recently built in Guatemala. Maya workers expertly face the oven with stone.

Bake oven fired up for the first time on the edge of Lake Atitlan. Sorry you missed it, but it was a great pizza party.

Bread Oven Tanzania

The village bakery -
bread is a vital part of the Tanzanian staple diet

Note the fire chamber beneath the baking area

Bread Oven Chile

The farm
November 06, 2004

This ancient but still functional mud oven produces fantastic meals and delicious pan amasado (hand-formed bread resembling hamburger-sized biscuits).

Note the large tray that slides in and out. Looks efficient, but I believe the quality would be better if the loaves were baked directly on the hearth.