April gets ready to lay another fire brick for the oven hearth

Preparations for our 2014 Cob Oven Workshop this year begin with building yet another completed oven ahead of the start of the course. It’s no fun if we can’t offer an earthen oven demonstration and pizza party as part of the class, and the oven that we’ll build over 2 days needs quite a bit of time to dry out before it can be used. Of course, this first oven will be used beyond our class this year, namely by the proud new owners for their various theatre events. We’re making nice progress on this oven and we’re patiently waiting for things to dry as we go along. Here’s hoping this is just the first of many ovens we will build in Kentucky!

The photos here don’t really convey just how honking big this guy really is. The foundation footprint is about 58″, which may seem excessive for a 27″ oven. It’s funny how small the baking dome is compared to the overall size. Reason being is that we like to pack a whole lot of insulation around the oven for maximum efficiency. This is especially good for pizza baking, since you can churn out a lot more pizza at high sustained temperatures with a goodly amount of insulation.

I’m glad the stone stacking is far behind us now, as it takes a big amount of effort to dry stack a foundation of this size and shape. Though of course we need to complete another foundation for the workshop oven, but don’t remind me of that for the moment… We used rocks off the land, which is new to me since I have never lived in a place with abundant rock like this. You were lucky to find a small stone in northeast Missouri. (No joke.)

Jacob puts some finishing touches on the sand form before we pack cob around it

Now that the cob dome is done, we’ll wait at least a week for it to dry before we pack insulation around the dome. The oven site is very shady, so it’s taking longer than expected for wet cob to dry out. I prefer to be patient, though, since it’s easier for individual wet layers to dry out before piling on yet more wet material.

Hopefully the finished product is a mere week or two away!