Wood Fired Cookbook GIVEAWAY!!!

Since we finished reconstructing our wood fired hearth oven I thought I'd give away a copy of this beautiful book! Whether you dream of wood fired cookery or are interested in tips for regulating heat zones in your hearth oven, this book is sure to inspire you. If cooking in a brick oven is not in your future, many if not all of these recipes can easily be adapted to standard oven use. This book is chock-full of recipes for Pizza, Calzones, Flatbread, Seafood, Poultry, Meat, Vegetables, Pasta, Rice, Eggs, Bread and Desserts with an old world rustic style.

Enter to Win!

I would like to give away a FREE copy of this book

as the first in a series of Holiday Giveaways

There are four ways to enter, choose one or quadruple your chances by doing all three!

1. Follow this blog and comment on this post

2. Friend my Facebook Page and leave me a comment

3. Visit my website goatmilksoapandlotion.com 

and sign the guest book located at the bottom of the About Us page

4. Share this giveaway on Facebook and/or your blog and post a link to the share as a comment here!

 

This GIVEAWAY Ends November 30th

Good Luck!!

Reconstructing Our Wood Fired Hearth Oven Part 2

Once we have the oven core in place we started looking for finishing materials. The rock we used in the initial construction was long gone, scattered throughout other projects. We looked for more rock but couldn't find anything. We even looked at buying new rock but that is not our way of doing things.

The first piece that came our way was the Indiana limestone slabs that we cut and shaped for the hearth.

Next we were able salvage some decorative cut limestone from a hundred year old house that was being demolished.  The bricks for the chimney came from the same house as the decorative cut limestone.

We used Roxul rock wool insulation around the dome of the oven.

Stucco mesh corner bead over the rock wool.

Ready for Stucco!

First fire!

Ready to bake!!

 Bread ready to load onto the oven

Wood Fired Bread!

Wood Fired Pizza!

Reconstructing Our Wood Fired Hearth Oven Part 1

This is the story of my wood fired brick oven. As with most great adventures ours was born of passion. In this case it was a passion for good bread! In our quest we found the ultimate guide, The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens by Daniel Wing. This book contains an inspiring discourse on brick oven history as well as oven plans and recipes. It was all my husband needed to design our oven.

Oven construction began late in summer of 2002

A hearth large enough to bake 30 loaves

It was a masterpiece

For two years we used the oven regularly baking for the Farmers Market and throwing amazing pizza parties for friends and family. When we moved to the farm we had to partially disassemble the oven in order to move it. When we had the crane move it to the farm they weighed it. The oven core alone weighs 6,540lbs! There was no time in the midst of moving with five children to dig footings and pour concrete for a new base. We had it set temporally on railroad ties. Temporally? That was seven years ago! We are determined to get it operational again this year.

 This summer we poured a new reinforced foundation and built the new oven base. You can see the oven core on the rail road ties in the background.

 The front loader arrives to move the oven to the new base.

 In order to position the oven on the new base we had to set it down and lift it from with straps from above.

Notice that the oven never touches the base, the rebar provides a gap. This gap allows the heat to stay in the oven and not transfer the base.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. In part two I'll show how we finished it!

Back to Blogging

I just wanted to pop in and say that I am getting back to blogging. A heartfelt thank you, to all of you who have stayed with me over the past postless months!! We have had some pretty big projects that I can't wait to share with you. I have two fantastic GIVEAWAYS coming right up, so stay tuned!!