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RE: Swedish bread oven

Shack <shacke@earthlink.net>
Sun, 5 Oct 2003 08:29:19 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
v103.n044.2
I just finished building an earth (mud,adobe,cob,whatever you wish to call 
it) oven in my backyard.  I am unfamiliar with swedish oven design per se 
and I have learned quite a bit about the different types of ovens.  The 
earth oven can be built any size you want, although the standard size is a 
27 in hearth floor of firebrick.  There is a wonderful book called Build 
Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer which I used and that is available 
online.  I got mine from Amazon.com and you can see more about this oven at 
http://www.intabas.com/kikodenzer.html

It is an environmentally friendly way of building and baking if you choose 
to build it that way and can be quite inexpensive to build if you can 
scrounge up the materials in you neighborhood (soil, rubble, sand, rocks is 
pretty much all you need).  Mine cost less than $500 and was easy to build 
and $350 of it was for nice stones for the foundation.  I chose this oven 
over all brick for space issues.  Plus the earth oven is an all out group 
and  family affair (kids love the mud!) although I did mine mostly alone 
with some help from toddlers and friends.  You could easily build a basic 
oven in a day!

If you want a more involved project - still entirely in the realm of the 
novice - is a true all brick oven which is outlined in the book The Bread 
Builders, written by Alan Scott and Dan Wing.  Scott is the oven master and 
has his own site at www.ovencrafters.net  Plans for this oven are in the 
book which is a serious treatise on bread baking - no recipes though.

There is also a great group on yahoo! called brick-oven which you can 
peruse and join.  There is a ton of info, mostly on the brick ovens 
designed by Alan Scott but there is adobe oven talk there as well.  Kiko 
Denzer answers questions about his oven there as well.  He is very 
approachable and a good person.

I think you can bake any bread you want in either of these wood fired 
ovens, even flatbread varieties.

Good luck - if you decide to build an oven, have fun and prepare for 
everyone you know to be in awe of you!

Evan