Ball Gowns and Bread Ovens

An arctic blast ripped our serene little winter to shreds this year. The roads were icy enough to keep all of us at home here on the hilltop for a week with rolling blackouts and busted water mains thrown into the mix just to keep all those inches upon inches of beautiful snow from getting too boring. At that time, for me, working from home involved long days in front of a laptop. For my children it was much the same. Only this time 'round, it was so bitterly cold that we could not stay in our separate sections of the house and be warm. By noon, I grabbed my computer, a lap desk, and dragged a rocking chair next to open fireplace so I could work without shivering or wrapping up in a blanket. My children soon followed suit.

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Gathered around the fireside with my family keeping warm, brought me supreme contentment. The only thing I felt was missing was a loaf of bread rising on the mantle. Fortunately Mr. Bleu has been trying his hand at bread making--a hobby which has the full support of the entire family--and he quickly remedied that situation. Ever since November, we have been planning to build our own outdoor cob bread oven, and the lovely spring month of April we finally got started. We began by crudely weaving some thin strips of hickory into this dome shape. This is the skeleton of our bread oven.

After the wooden frame was covered with three layers of a mud/ sand/ straw mixture, it dried for a week. At the end of that week, we started a fire to burn out the internal frame. Once the frame was burned away we mopped out the inside and then started a new fire and baked our first loaf of bread. After this photo was taken, the base was restructured so that the bricks lay flush with the edge making it easier to get bread in and out of the oven without that lip blocking the peal.

A peal is essentially a long flat paddle or spatula that is used to insert the bread into and remove the bread from the oven. The handle is long so that a person can stand back away from the heat and not risk getting burned.

A cob oven usually requires, a firebrick base, and a wooden basket style frame covered in a mixture of mud and clay, plus a door of some kind. The handmade door was the trickiest part and I would suggest making the door first, then layering the mud on so that it forms to the door. Otherwise you'll have to block the gaps with cloth as we have done. Naturally there is a lot of information out there about how to build a cob oven and it tends to involve a lot of supplies and work, but keep in mind these ovens were originally built on the go.

They're not made to last more than a season or two, so certainly we should be able to build something for relatively little cost and effort, again and again. There is an initial startup cost for supplies. We spent around $50 on fire bricks, and $20 on sand and paving bricks plus about $15 for a cotton tarp used for mixing the mud and sand. And, there was a lot of muscle power that went into digging up several buckets of red clay and then spreading it on the tarp to mix it by hand and foot and then spreading it over the frame. But, we did it as a family and whatever it takes, I want to master this craft and make it a regular part of our lives.

Why so much interest in an outdoor oven? If you've never had bread baked in a cob oven, you've never had good bread. Oh, yes, I've had bread in France, Germany, and Italy, even geyser bread baked in the hot earth in Iceland, and they're amazing, but this bread is in a class all its own. (notice the piece of metal hanging there as a heat shield to protect the wooden shelter)

I know this isn't the sort of thing to which I typically devote a blog post, but I have been looking forward to building this oven almost as much as I have been looked forward to getting each of my gorgeous gowns from Teuta Matoshi. I suppose it sounds strange to pair those two things, but that's just me. I like gardening as much as galas and bread ovens as much as ball gowns.

I would like to make a small side note here that not only did I not bake this batch of bread, it came from Trader Joe's, but this bread oven is also not hot. If it were I would not be able to sit so close to it. This oven has fully cooled and this bread is far more beautiful than anything I have ever made. Now you know that. I know I didn't have to say anything, I just didn't want to be the one who ruined the internet's long standing tradition of honesty and no one ever faking anything. Whew, I'm glad I didn't ruin it. Now, back to what I was saying.

People aren't meant to be put in tiny boxes, we're meant to be complex, multifaceted, unique. And that's how I like life. A little of this, a little of that, a little from way over there, it all comes together to be something uniquely my own and I wouldn't have it any other way. I got tired of trying to fit in a long time ago; fitting in is so boring!

No matter what it is, from homesteading to haute couture, what makes me happiest is doing what I like, and I like lots and lots of things. I've kept this blog mainly fashion focused for a number of years, but I think it's time to start integrating a few other things, so this may not be my last post about the bread oven adventure and other homestead related topics. There's a lot to do this summer so we don't get caught off guard by another arctic blast next winter, and I hope you'll join me in learning and talking about all of them.