Cob Oven

[Coot]

Anyone ever make a cob oven? I am looking for plans & how to hints. Thanks

 

[Claude Mathis]

Have you seen these?
[url] http://www.earthgarden.com[/url].au/strawbale/cob_oven2.pdf
[url] http://balinsky.com/gallery/coboven http://www.kizapark.com/coboven.htm http://www.innerexplorations.com/simpletext/oven.htm http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Garden_house_cob_oven http://www.dacres.org/Cob Oven Project.htm http://mha-net.org/docs/v8n2/wildac04b.htm[/url]

 

[Coot]

Thanks Claude, I have seen some but not all that you listed. The "best" website that I found was:

http://jm69.free.fr/four/

It shows a very interesting portable cob bake oven. Mrs Coot has done bake oven demos at Williamsburg & a home oven would be fun. The portable oven seems more practical than a permanent oven if we ever relocate & we could even get it into the truck for one weeklong event that is not too far from home. Unfortunately I do not speak or read French!

 

[Claude Mathis]

Thanks Claude, I have seen some but not all that you listed. The "best" website that I found was:

http://jm69.free.fr/four/

It shows a very interesting portable cob bake oven.

Kind of looks like a "siege oven". :grin:

 

[mmahlock]

You might find this reference from the Biography of Sir Harry Smith of interest. It is a bit long but by the time you get to the end you'll get the point.

The want of ovens alone prevented our making bread. This subject engrossed my attention for a whole day, but on awakening one morning a sort of vision dictated to me, “There are plenty of oyster-shells, and there is sand. Burn the former and make mortar, and construct ovens.” So I sent on board to Admiral Malcolm to send me a lot of hoops of barrels by way of a framework for my arch. There was plenty of wood, the shells were burning, the mortar soon made, my arch constructed, and by three 0'clock there was a slow fire in a very good oven on the ground. The baker was summoned, and the paste was made, ready to bake at daylight. The Admiral, dear Malcolm, and our Generals were invited to breakfast, but I did not tell even Sir John Lambert why I had asked a breakfast-party. He only laughed and said, “I wish I could give them a good one!” Oh, the anxiety with which I and my baker watched the progress of our exertions! We heard the men-or-war's bells strike eight o'clock. My breakfast-party was assembled. I had an unusual quantity of salt beef and biscuit on the table, the party was ready to fall to, when in I marched at the head of a column of loaves and rolls, all piping hot and as light as bread should be. The astonishment of the Admiral was beyond all belief and he uttered a volley of monosyllables at the idea of a soldier inventing anything. Oh, how we laughed and ate new bread, which we hadn't seen for some time! At first the Admiral thought I must have induced his steward to bake me the bread as a joke, when I turned to Sir John and said, “Now, sir, by this time to-morrow every Company shall have three ovens, and every man his pound and a half of bread." I had sent for the Quartermasters of Corps; some started difficulties, but I soon removed them. One said, "Where are we to get all the hoops?" This was, I admit, a puzzle. I proposed to make the arch for the mortar of wood, when a very quick fellow, Hogan, Quartermaster of the Fusiliers, said, “I have it: make a bank of sand, plaster over it; make your oven; when complete, scratch the sand out." In a camp everything' gets wind, and Harry Smith's ovens were soon in operation all over the island. There were plenty of workmen, and the morrow produced the bread.

 

[Hayduke]

Also give this a look.[url] http://www.cobcottage.com/[/url]

Lots of good information and some nice ovens, too.

 

[Bountyhunter]

Cob oven is just a Yankee term for a Horno. Down here, every NDN has a horno in their yard. We have a horno at the County Museum, and it is fired up and used to bake hundreds of loaves of bread at every open house and event. It is pronounced OR-no. The fire is built inside the oven and there is a vent in the top. Inside temperatures can reach 700 degrees or so. Bread baked in the horno just tastes better than other bread.

Do a web search for Horno and you will come up with dozens of articles. You have two ways of doing it, making you some adobe bricks ahead of time then laying up and mudding the bricks, or just making the mud--cobb--and doing it the difficult way. Your choice, but there is a lot more info on hornos than on cobbs. There are people here that use hornos every day, so you will probably get better information on hornos than from a bunch of old hippies on cobb ovens. The secret of the oven is in the clay that you use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horno http://www.primitiveways.com/adobe_horno.html http://www.ca-missions.org/mccummins.html

There are lots more articles.

 

[qcpidoc]

I've built several of them. We built one at Ft Yargo in GA last year. You put a lot more effort and time into the base than the oven itself. We built the style used in Europe for at least 10,000 years. We used a sand positive to give the dome right, made the inner few inches of pure clay, than about 10" of a clay/straw/sand mix(cob) an outer coating of a clay/lime mix to add water resistance ( a clay/manure mix is also very traditional). The math of getting the dome height to door opening height is critical to make it burn and draw correctly without a separate flue. You use a lot more wood to heat it and it cools quicker with a flue - the old ones that worked did not seem to have a flue. The door opening should be 63% of the dome height. When we heat it up, it gets to be 800-900 degrees, the fire is then raked out, floor swabbed and allowed to equalize and cool to about 475-500 before putting the bread in and a wooden door to block the opening.You can continue to use it to cook other foods for 6-8 hours or more. Ours was still 350 after 7 hours.

Two very useful books:

1. Build your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer -- considered the current bible of building earthen/clay/cob ovens-- readily available

2.The Bread Ovens of Quebec by Lise Boily and Jean-Francois Blanchette-- lots of info on building traditional European style ovens, they use a woven stick frame to give the shape -- this book is out of print and considered a collectible but it is the source of a lot of the research

A picture from when we got the outer coat finished- its now very black around the opening and the source of great bread.

 

[Coot]

Thanks for the good info! I will do a search for the books. :hatsoff: