Thinking about Building a Bread Oven?

I must admit I have.  It’s rather replaced the Viking range, it seems, as a symbol that you are really serious about cooking.  But I’m not going to write about how to do it.  I gather this is the go-to book on how to get going if you want to join that happy band.  I tell myself I will get one step ahead of the crowd by building a traditional bench stove but actually I think I’m just too lazy to do either. I am addicted to cooking appliances where the fuel is piped in and doesn’t sit around in the garage offering a cozy home for scorpions and where the thing lights at the turn of a switch or press of a button.

And there is a funny thing about national boundaries.  As cooks in the United States are re-discovering the unique virtues of bread ovens (and yes, there really are unique virtues), no one seems to remark on the fact that in small towns across Mexico, people have such ovens on their back patios.  Not everyone of course but those who bake.  Here’s a illustrated account of a Mexican bread baker, thanks to Paul Roberts.  His photos of the oven and the kitchen are exactly like the oven and kitchen of this Mexican pastry baker I visited some years ago (though they used fallen branches and prunings from their orchard to fire the oven).

While we’re at it, here’s a link (thanks Cindy Bertelson) to a recreation of baking bread in a tabletop clay oven at Jamestown, a reminder that you can experiment on a smaller scale if building a big oven is not for you.

And remember our discussion about life without ovens some weeks back?  Well here’s an article from the always-interesting Ray Sokolov about doing without an oven.  But the tack is quite different.  No use of the oven for storage here. Instead it’s off to buy a turkey deep fryer, a Breville table top oven and a Diva cooking range.  I was very tempted by the table top oven but, alas, it needs electricity.  I’d hate to depend on that in Mexico.  But may be one day . . .

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