Joined: May 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 48 Location: Michigan AKA Zone 5
Pictures of my Earth Oven « Thread Started on Aug 19, 2009, 8:13am »
After waiting to do this project and taking about 1 year to collect all the "ingredients" I finally started the earth oven. The hardest part to making this was finding the clay! Who would have thought that it would be so hard to find clay? I made the base of 27 cinder blocks that a friend just had sitting around after he added on to his home. I only paid $.70 each for them. so that was $18.90. I cheated and used the new construction glue for blocks, they were $1.99 a tube and I used 4 so that was $7.96, I used a 24 by 24 inch paving block to cap the base, it was $7.99 and I had to buy one bag of lava rock to help with the bottle insulating layer, that was $4.79 for a 50lb bag and the fire bricks were $1.29 each and you need 21 for the size I made and that totaled $27.30 Last but not least I needed to buy 7 bags of play sand and that was $1.68 a bag on sale- some of the sand does go into the clay mix but most was just used for the form and was taken out and put in my grand daughters sandbox.
This first picture is the base with the ring of free old chimney bricks that I have had for ever. It is used to make the bottom insulating layer- the bottles are surrounded by lava rocks and these will help hold the heat on the bottom of the oven.
I then put a nice thick layer of clay/sand mix over the bottle/lava rock layer to seal them in, I did let this dry for about a week so that it would not take so long to dry out the whole base. I put down a nice layer of clay and carefully laid the firebricks into the clay- trying to make sure that they were snuggled next to one another so that ashes couldn't fall in between them, so it would not build up on your foods.
Here is the inside sand mold that you build your clay oven around. I made mind a bit smaller and not as round as some of the ones in the book (Building an Earth oven by Kiko Denzer) but after reading many different sites where others have made one I kinda made it more like the beehive types that are made in Canada, a bit smaller and taller with a kind of peaked top, I figured that it gets cold here and up in Canada, and so far while it is still summer it does burn well and doesn't smolder out. Once you get the sand mold done, then you cover it with a layer of newspaper.
Here I stopped halfway to take a picture. I was putting baked potato sized lumps of clay on at a time around the sand mold.
A word to the wise- this stuff is heavy and when I mix the clay batch for the last insulating layer I will mix it in smaller batches as it was much harder than it looks when you watch someone else do it on youtube.!
Here it is all covered! I let it dry for a few days before cutting the door and taking out the sand.
Joined: May 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 48 Location: Michigan AKA Zone 5
Re: Pictures of my Earth Oven « Reply #1 on Aug 19, 2009, 8:36am »
Here is the door being cut out to pull out the clay- I had to do it a bit sooner than I was going to due to the cracks forming from the clay shrinking as it drys (all normal tho) Here is a picture of the cracks developing- they do go away when the sand was removed but when I fire that puppy up they come back.
Here is the first tiny little fire I made in it to help speed the drying up a bit (it is recommended in the book if it has been rainy and damp, which our spring was).
Here you can see the moisture/dry line as it drys out.
The first real firing for cooking in!
The first Pita bread, and it puffed perfectly!
Right after the pita were done the first two pizza's went in- I have learned that it is easier (so far) to make them about pita sized, I am sure that once I get better at sliding them off the cookie sheet onto the oven floor I will be able to make them bigger. But man what a flavor they had!
The ugly secret of pizza not all slide off the peel! But it did taste great anyways! Now I just stopped at this step in the making of the oven so that we could get it dry and make a few pizza's, there is another insulating layer to go on top, it is just the clay mixed with straw and I will be making that layer soon I hope! And I will definitely put up the pictures of that too! Now this oven does make a good pita and pizza and I have even made cinnamon rolls! But for pizza and pita you do just push the coals out of the way and leave them going in the oven for the high heat, but to make it so that I can cook several things one after another I do have to have that insulating layer on as it does lose heat quite quickly, the floor stays quite hot for many hours but the upper dome does not. And since the insulating layer is not attached to the oven layer it does not make a difference if the bottom/clay/oven layer is dry when you put the outer insulating layer on.
http://padgettsperennials.blogspot.com www.picasaweb.google.com/plantsnobin Ave last frost May 10, first frost Oct. Generally no snow cover in winter, hot & very humid summers. Don't eat greens. Or Brussels sprouts, or any of that other healthy stuff. Strawberries=pure paradise. Live on 2 acres, daughter next door has 3 acres, and family farm across highway is 196 acres, mostly in hay.
Joined: May 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 48 Location: Michigan AKA Zone 5
Re: Pictures of my Earth Oven « Reply #5 on Aug 20, 2009, 12:23pm »
Thanks everyone! I hope that this will encourage others to make one as it is far easier than it sounds to do. Now the learning how to cook in it that is an experience! I still am not really that good at the pizza thing so it will probably be, at least 2 more tries before I invite the rest of the family, but by then it should be cooler and we can all just hang out in the back yard with the warm sweatshirts on, Fall and Spring are some of my favorite times to be outside!
Joined: Jul 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 581 Location: New Mexico
Re: Pictures of my Earth Oven « Reply #6 on Aug 20, 2009, 11:22pm »
We used to make pizza in the gril as a kid. You might need to test it and play with it. For us we had a small window, get the grill nic and hot, as it was dieing down throw two pizzas on back to back, and you barely had enough time. You have to prebake the crust though. My mom has a great fried pizza dough recipe but I dont know it. So with something like that I bet youd have a much bigger window but I bet youd still want to wait till the fire is dieing down.
From high dessert, New Mexico. A blend of arid conditions and mountainess climates. Working towards being completly self sufficient. In balance with my sorroundings wide awake, and aware. The possibilities of plant breeding and how little credit most give it amaze me. Earth is a living eco-system, and will have a self regulating system of our removal, if neccessary. We must learn to ride the wave
lavandulagirl Homegrown Seed Development and Project Coordinator member is offline
Guru?! How am I supposed to turn the compost from the lotus position?
Joined: Feb 2007 Gender: Female Posts: 1,277 Location: zone 9a/SWGB zone 7, rural
Re: Pictures of my Earth Oven « Reply #8 on Aug 21, 2009, 4:12pm »
Emerald... this project came out too cool. I have a question... is this usable in a cold winter? (You mentioned the Canadian ones.) It doesn't crack the clay, I mean? We live in an area that does get cold, but not like Canada cold. Of course, for the better part of the year, open flames are frowned upon! No one has come and hosed down my barbeque yet, though, so I bet I could get away with a clay oven.
Joined: May 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 48 Location: Michigan AKA Zone 5
Re: Pictures of my Earth Oven « Reply #9 on Aug 21, 2009, 4:39pm »
I think that it should be ok as long as I keep it covered when not using it- I do have a bit of rain damage on one of the corners due to the high winds that came thru with the latest storms, but it is not bad and is totally fixable- I do plan on making some sort of permanent covering for it but when it does storm here, the rain goes sideways! So I might just buy a better waterproof tarp and put some nice weights on the ends, right now it is just covered by a $2 old shower curtain and the curtain is being held in place by a couple of bungee cords. Very attractive I live in a small 4-way stop town and while they might give me grief about open fires when there is a red flag burning ban, I live right next to the township hall and the fella in charge is an old friend's father and while he drives by each day to go to work, he has not said anything about the oven which is slightly visible from the road, and many of the neighbors have asked about it and not said anything other than, When's the pizza party?!
![[Home]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/menu/home.gif)
![[Help]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/menu/help.gif)
![[Search]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/menu/search.gif)
![[Login]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/menu/login.gif)
![[Register]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/menu/register.gif)
![[Search This Thread]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/search2.gif)
![[Send Topic To Friend]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/sendtopic.gif)
![[Print]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/print.gif)
Author
![[avatar]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/emeraldsfroggie.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepictures008.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepictures010.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17019.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17031.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17034.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/randysphone013.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/randysphone014.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17037.jpg)
Logged
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17044.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17047.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicsjune17048.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/0618091902b.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicturesjune2909014.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicturesjune2909017.jpg)
![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicturesjune2909020.jpg)
not all slide off the peel! But it did taste great anyways!![[image]](http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb1/emeraldwitch_2007/phonepicturesjuly11pizzaandbacon002.jpg)
![[avatar]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/avatars/iceskatekid.gif)
![[avatar]](http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc297/Clarkbar2311/jimavatar.jpg){kind=avatar}
I still am not really that good at the pizza thing so it will probably be, at least 2 more tries before I invite the rest of the family, but by then it should be cooler and we can all just hang out in the back yard with the warm sweatshirts on, Fall and Spring are some of my favorite times to be outside!
![[avatar]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/avatars/smiley.gif)
![[avatar]](http://img1.jurko.net/11198.gif)
No one has come and hosed down my barbeque yet, though, so I bet I could get away with a clay oven.
![[avatar]](http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn312/canadamike1/MESPHOTOS001-3.jpg)
![[avatar]](http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r131/telsingandrews/IMG_1588.jpg)
![[homepage]](http://s4.images.proboards.com/buttons/www_sm.gif)