simple and small brick oven
I would like to build a small - 2 loaves max - brick oven for making bread during the summer. I have a lot of wood I could use for fuel, and my main goal is not to have an oven going in the house. I am not particularly handy, and have never mixed, poured, rebarred, etc. concrete. I downloaded the plans for dome ovens from Forno Bravo, and I think I could never successfully build to them. I was hoping for something a lot simpler. I am guessing I will have to pour concrete no matter what I do, but I just want to start smaller and simpler. Also, unless I'm misunderstanding, in Forno's design you have the fire and the bread in the same compartment. I was thinking you could build the fire underneath and bake the bread on top. Is that a misconception? I have absolutely no need to make a lot of bread at a time. Usually I bake a single loaf. Very occasionally two.
Thanks for any pointers you can give me.
Hi
If you want to work this small, you have no need to have a fire running at the same time as you bake.
The whole principle of this type of baking is the use of retained heat.
So all you do is build a fire in your brick chamber and build up sufficient heat to bake your 2 loaves. Put the fire out, clean your oven, let it settle and bake your bread.
I would recommend that you read Daniel Wing and Alan Scott's book "The Bread Builders" It's about as instructive as you could possibly wish; a great read
Best wishes
Andy
You may want to take a look at Kiko Denzer's ovens.
Thanks so much for your suggestions. I will follow each of your pointers. Somehow I should be able to do this. I only have around 2 months to get this done if I want it in time for summer, so I'm sure you'll be hearing from me as I muddle along.
Varda
Varda, if you can buy a copy of Mother Earth magazine, the latest one, there is an article about building a simple oven. Sorry I can't give you more information - my son just took my copy home with him. I'm hoping I can persuade him to build one for me, A.
I Googled Mother Earth News and went to the Do It Yourself page and found the article about the oven, which is actually multi-purpose - baking, grilling and even smoking. Made out of concrete blocks and firebricks and good looking, A.
Varda, so sorry, I tried to edit my reply to you and ended up with lines of gobbledygook which I can't remove. Apologies to all, A.
Thanks!
hi i think i know exactly what ur talking about, a few years ago my uncle kindly built one for me very simple, the way it was done back home, its also dome shaped with a sheet of metal separating fire compartment and baking compartment. i hope u will post some pics if you make it. mine is very rustic, home made style lol. but nicest manooche ever, nothing like woodfire.
do you have a picture that you could post by any chance?
Here is a simple, small, inexpensive adobe oven plans that should fit your needs. Could be built in a weekend.
http://tinyurl.com/p9hjfv
So as much as I'd like to avoid it, the more I speak with people locally about this, the more I think the harsh winters (boston area) require a concrete pad. Otherwise whatever I build will just settle and get rearranged during the winter. But from all the pointers and suggestions above, it seems like once you get a concrete pad in place there are probably simpler alternatives than straight brick. Although I'm not sure adobe is that simple either. I guess it is a skills issue - it is actually hard to lay decent brick even when it's not dome or cylinder shaped. But coming up with 8 wheelbarrels full of clay dirt for the adobe doesn't sound like a walk in the park either.
I saw this post yesterday, but hung back to see what others suggested. I would also recommend you think about a horno (Denzer-style adobe oven) that can be put together with minimal skills and cheaply, so you won't take a big hit if it doesn't work as well as you expect.
That said, if you want to go the masonry route, don't be discouraged. Laying brick isn't all that tough -- unless you want to do it fast and "pretty". A WFO doesn't have to be fast OR pretty to work well. You can get by with only a few tools - a mixing hoe, a brick trowel, a hammer and chisel. Or, if you want to upgrade, a right-angle grinder with a diamond masonry wheel that will easily cut brick will only cost about $150. As another poster mentioned, the Scott & Wing book is a great reference, as is Kiko Denzer's book. I recommend you get a copy of each and read them thouroughly before you decide. Each has it's pros and cons. All styles of WFOs are compromises, and you just have to decide what's important to you and your cooking choices.
Things to be aware of:
There are two kinds of WFO's -- black oven and white ovens. "Black ovens" are so named because you build the fire inside the cooking chamber. They make up the majority of WFOs. In white ovens, the fire is outside the cooking chamber. These are generally more difficult to build and take more space since you need seperate heating and cooking chambers, and a system to deliver the heat from the fire box to the oven chamber.
Smaller can be tough because you'll have difficulty firing if the chamber is too small to maintain a good flow of combustion air. You also have to be more careful feeding the fire -- in a normal-size oven, you can pretty much just fill the chamber, light it and forget about it until it burns down. In a small oven, you need to use less wood to start, and feed it as the wood burns down. You'll still need high mass though, or the oven won't maintain even heat long enough to bake your bread. If you think about it, you'll realize that smaller means less efficient since you need almost the same amount of heat (i.e., fuel) to get the temps up, but wind up with less usable baking heat since the chamber is small. You also have to deal with the fact that the door is a much larger ratio of opening to chamber volume, which means you lose heat faster.
There are two kinds of baking you can do in a WFO. Fire-out baking, like bread, and fire-in baking, like pizza. In an oven only large enough for two loaves, you'll effectively eliminate fire-in baking. I have a small WFO (about 2' X 3' chamber) and it's just big enough to use for fire-in baking. Any smaller, and there would be no room for anything but the fire. It'll hold 5 standard loaves and I bake 5 at a time and freeze (or give away to friends) what we don't use in a day or two. But it's also big enough to bake dinners in. I think it's a pretty ideal size for home use, but again, as in everything WFO, it's a compromise.
Hope that helps.
ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA
I hadn't really thought about some of the points you are raising. I was hoping to avoid having something like a battleship in my backyard, since I just want to make one or two loaves at a time. Given my handiwork skills it would look like a battleship built by a kindergartner, so just from a purely aesthetic perspective smaller is better.
I am also considering building an outdoor oven, and just found plans in the recent issue of Mother Earth News. I don't know how these plans compare to the other posted ones, but here is a link if you are interested: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/Build-An-All-In-One-Outdoor-Oven-Stove-Grill-And-Smoker.aspx
edit: my apologies. I just noticed these plans were already mentioned.
Gertrude, I thought this outdoor oven looked reasonably simple to build as well as being multi-purpose. I hope you will let us know if you go ahead and build one. I'm hoping to convince my son that it's a good idea because it would have to be on his property - and with his labor! A.
...my main goal is not to have an oven going in the house...
Given that you don't have a lot of space and don't have a lot of handyman skills and don't know which bricks are firesafe and which aren't and want to fiddle with your bread not your bricks, maybe there's another way besides a brick oven to reach your main goal: get a second kitchen range (know somebody that's remodeling their kitchen?-) and install it outdoors. (Beware construction codes/inspections in your locality though, not just for outdoor ranges but also for anything else you might build.)
How to build Sunset's classic adobe oven
Use these step-by-step instructions to build a rustic outdoor oven. This oven should be perfect for you.
http://tinyurl.com/ojjlrm
I went on to buy Kiko Denzer's book. I built a foundation by digging a square sided hole as deep as I could go which wasn't far since I hit ledge in some cases six inches beneath the surface. I filled that with small rocks and then gravel. I made a frame of cinder blocks around the hole and then filled that with more rocks and gravel. Then I put an insulation mix on top of that with a combination of glass bottles and perlite mixed in mud. Then I put a layer of pieces of brick wall (recovered from a demolition site) on top of that. Then I laid 9 foot square inch thick granite pieces in a big square on top of that as the hearth floor. Then I built a 5 inch thick mud dome on top of that, cut a door, and got a 5/8 inch square of plywood to cover the door. I screwed in a handle to the "door" to make it easier to use. I baked A LOT in this over the course of last summer which may have kept the house from getting too hot (my original motivation) but was not helpful for keeping me cool. Toward the end of the summer the mud failed and fell in in places, and I spent a lot of time on repairs. Then it got too cold (I never insulated the dome) and got dark too early and I had a major cave in which I didn't bother to repair. I covered the whole thing up with a tarp for the winter. I was quite surprised to find that the base of the oven held up just fine over the winter. I was expecting it to settle or crack or whatever especially since this winter was particularly difficult. So now I just need to gather my resources to build a new dome. I believe that mud is the way to go but I have to make a better mud mix than last year. Thanks for posting the links.