FIRED WITH ENTHUSIASM

Rob Hopkins tells us how one humble and initially troublesome bread oven has spawned other creative community endeavours.
It was just built drystone, with rubble infill in the middle. On top of this was put a bed of sand onto which we gently placed fire bricks, so that they sat tightly together. Then we built a mound of wet sand in the shape of the inside of the finished stove. This was packed tightly with a board and covered with wet newspaper. The first mix of cob was just our clay subsoil, with any sizeable stones picked out, mixed on a tarpaulin to a consistency of crunchy peanut butter. This was then built up around the sand in a 8cm (3in) layer, until the sand form was covered. This was then packed with a board and scored to allow the next layer to attach itself. The second layer was the same but mixed with straw. This was put on about 10cm (4in) thick. Once the shell was complete, we cut the door out and removed the sand (Kikos book gives detailed information on how the height of the door relates to the height of the inside of the stove...). The outside was then smoothed and sculpted, and the whole thing was left to dry.

t seems to be all the rage these days for people to write in to PM with their earth oven stories, so, not wishing to be left out, I thought Id tell the tale of the cob oven we built at Kinsale Further Education Centre (KFEC) as part of the full-time practical sustainability / permaculture course. The idea to build the stove came about, as I imagine most similar projects have, after I had come across a copy of Kiko Denzers Build Your Own Earth Oven1. Despite being the course teacher and therefore supposedly knowing how Top: Flames dance up the walls of the clay oven, a good indication that it is getting really hot. Right: Plastering the outside of the oven.
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to do these things, I had never actually built an earth oven before, but in the true permaculture spirit, and believing that the best way to learn something is to teach it, I decided to get stuck in. We had just finished work on the strawbale house in the grounds of the college of KFEC, for which we had utilised some fantastic sandy clay from a building site nearby. One truck load had provided all the plaster for the internal walls of the house and for the undercoat outside. We also had some sand left over from the external lime rendering, and stone left from drystone walling we had done. All the ingredients for a cob stove were in place! To begin with we built a base. This was a circular drystone wall, about 90cm (3ft) high and 1.2m (4ft) wide.

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A WASTE OF TIME? Over the next couple of weeks we lit little fires in it to speed the drying, and then after about three weeks came our first bake! With great excitement we lit the fire, let it burn for a couple of hours, scraped out the fire, and eagerly placed our lovingly made first pizza inside. It did nothing. We were deeply disappointed. It brought to mind a letter I had seen in the Permaculture Activist2 from someone saying, Has anyone out there made an earth oven that actually works? Had we built it wrong? Had we not made a hot enough fire? Was Kiko Denzer just a chancer? Had we completely wasted our time? Had I rather embarrassed myself as the teacher of this course? The husband of one of my students dropped in one day to see it, and he had worked in a bakery in the UK which used wood-fired ovens. His advice was that the stove simply wasnt dry enough yet it needed to be completely dry before it could work properly. Over the next couple Top: Clay ovens need many weeks of drying out before they are ready for use, trying to bake in them too early only leads to disappointment. Right: Making pizza as a group activity. Opposite page: Perfectly cooked pizza with that unique flavour you can only get from a wood fired oven.
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of weeks we lit small fires in it again every few days. A few weeks later we felt it was probably safe to try again. Again we lit a fire and fed it for two hours until we had a deep bed of embers. One of my favourite things about these stoves is the way the flames dance up the walls of the interior of the stove when it is really hot very hard to describe but enchanting to watch. Once it was hot enough, we removed the fire and popped in the pizzas. This time, when we opened the door after 4-5 minutes, out came a perfectly cooked pizza, beautifully risen, light, fluffy yet crusty, one of the most delicious I have ever tasted (and Ive eaten a fair bit of pizza in my time). There is something about how bread bakes when sat directly onto wood-fired bricks that gives it an exquisite taste. All the students

were delighted, I was very relieved, it worked! Since then we have baked foccacia, rolls, biscuits and muffins (no souffl yet). They all emerge from the oven with a quality you never get from a gas or electric cooker. The bread rolls were like clouds plucked from the sky, light, moist and fluffy, melting in your mouth. In May, we had an Open Day, where the various courses offered at the college promoted themselves, and the public could come and see what we get up to. We made pizza, and visitors were queuing up for a slice. One of the simplest, easiest and most delicious things you can make in a clay oven is foccacia, just bread dough with olive oil, salt and fresh rosemary on top ( see Foccacia The Easy Way recipe in box on next page ).

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college, living in a world of sliced bread, to taste what bread tasted like to our ancestors, and how it should taste today, as well as seeing how vital good bread is to a sustainable culture Rob Hopkins is a permaculture teacher, and is course co-ordinator of the practical sustainability course at Kinsale Further Education Centre in Co. Cork, Ireland. He is also a director of The Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability in West Cork (www.theholliesonline.com). The practical sustainability course is a two year full-time course run through Cork VEC. Year One includes modules in permaculture design, field ecology, sustainable woodland management, organic horticulture and conflict resolution. Year Two contains modules in applied permaculture, starting your own business, organic market gardening, community leadership and natural building. For more information contact +353 21 4772275 or email:kinsalefurthered@eircom.net
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RECONNECTING Our bread oven is very popular, developing a life of its own. Some of the permaculture students now plan to open the strawbale house as a caf, serving breads and pizzas from the oven, together with salads grown in the polytunnel by the organic gardening students. A clay bread oven is a brilliant project to do with a group of people;

it reconnects people with the elements. You take the earth from under your feet, sculpt it with your feet and hands into a magical womb-like space, add another element, fire, and your oven then gives birth to humanitys most staple food, bread. The taste of bread fired in such an oven is magical. If making our stove has achieved nothing else, it has allowed students at the

Build Your Own Earth Oven, available from Permaculture Magazines Earth Repair Catalogue. The Permaculture Activist, available from Permaculture Magazines Earth Repair Catalogue.

FOCCACIA THE EASY WAY There are as many different recipes for foccacia dough as there are villages in Italy, the simplest one I make as follows... I normally start the dough as soon as I have lit the stove. Make a very basic bread dough, using an instant yeast for 1.4kg (3lbs) of strong organic white flour that means using 2 sachets. Mix a good slurp of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt into the flour, then add the yeast and then enough warm water to make up a dough. Knead for 10 minutes on a floured surface, then place in an oiled bowl, cover with a clean towel and leave in a warm place for 1-2 hours until risen to twice its original size. Once it has risen, knock it back and knead it for another 10 minutes, cover again and take it out to the stove. To make foccacia, put a good covering of flour on your peel (the flat metal spatula thing you use for taking things in and out of the oven with), so the dough can slide off it easily enough when you put it in the stove. Take a lump of dough about the size of an apple and flatten it with your hands onto the peel to get it about as thick as a chunky slice of bread. Then pock-mark the surface with your fingers so it looks a bit like the surface of the moon. Drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle with a coarse salt and top with sprigs of rosemary (which, of course, as good permaculturists you already have planted just next to the oven...). You could also use sage, or chives, its a great way to experiment with the produce of your herb garden. Then pop in the oven for 2-3 minutes and then prepare yourself for the most delicious things you have tasted for a long time!

BUILD YOUR OWN EARTH OVEN

by Kiko Denzer This is the absolutely essential guide for anyone wanting to make an inexpensive, beautiful earth oven for baking and cooking in the most natural way. With its simple, clear instructions and ample and enjoyable illustrations it will have you getting stuck into mud sooner than you can say bread and will have you baking it in just a little longer! 128pp Code: BEO 9.95+p&p SUBSCRIBERS PRICE: 8.95+p&p Available from Permaculture Magazines Earth Repair Catalogue.

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