Our New Wood Oven

The Aadheenam has finished building our first true wood oven. We've tested and experimented for a few years now using a cheaper, smaller and mobile wood oven. It has proved to be a great asset so we decided to build a larger, permanent one. The wood oven serves many roles. It is used to make bread, cook pizza on our once a month pizza night and can be used other creative retreat dinners. Though we don't foresee one on the horizon, it also serves as an oven in case of a natural disaster like a hurricane, using naturally fallen trees as its only fuel.

The foundation is made.

The first part of the cooking slab. It has to be created in two pieces because otherwise it is too heavy to move!

Tejadevanatha and Doug use our CAT to carefully place the cooking slabs.

The first part fits perfectly in place.

Now the second part!

Doug then uses regular bricks, fire bricks and a combination of concrete and vermiculite to create the oven floor.

Precise measurements are required!

The wood oven kit we use has a large mold that we use to create the perfect dome shape.

Once the mold is in place, we use a high temp mortar combined with stainless steel shards to create the wood oven dome.

Once the mortar is packed and left to cure, the foam mold is torn off.

Then it is wrapped in a ceramic blanket which keeps in all the heat!

Doug, being an expert in masonry, builds the inner layers of the finishing work.

We use lava rock as our decoration stone to give an ancient Hawaiian feel.

This is what it looks like from the back.

Once the oven is finished, the curing process starts, which takes several weeks to complete. A very small fire starts the process and gets progressively larger until all the moisture is driven out of the thick high temp mortar.

The oven is in full force now! The area underneath is used to store wood.

Our first cooking with the new oven was on our monthly pizza night. This wood oven is so well insulated that it stays hot for many hours even after the fire is put out. The stone floor of the oven is around 700 to 800 degrees F when we cook, but the air temp can get up to 1200 F! We look forward to many more creative culinary experiments using our wood oven

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