Keep the beans moving so they don't burn.

For the past 7 years I have been roasting our household coffee in the wood oven , and while I don’t claim to be an expert, I have now roasted over 300 times and you can’t help but learn a few things along the way.

First thing , Why bother ? Well, by buying green beans you will find it a whole lot cheaper than at the gourmet coffee store . I can buy organic, shade tree, fair trade , ethical coffee, in bulk delivered to my door in the Canadian outback for $4 a lb. That very same stuff roasted can cost you from $12 -$16. You can get regular non organic Brazilian for much, much less.

Green coffee is not taxed when it comes in to most countries, and here in Canada it’s considered food , so it isn’t taxed when you buy it either.

Second , it’s just so fresh ,…….. unless you have a nearby coffee roaster you are buying stale coffee. Starbucks for instance, has to let their their coffee sit around for several days before shipping, because fresh roasted coffee de-gasses for up to 1-3 days [depending on the variety] , so it will blow up those foil bags if they don’t . Fresh roasted coffee is fantastic , you can make it really strong [we make espresso] and it is never bitter.

sweep the embers aside for the roaster

Thirdly,…… heck! who needs any more reasons …..…..

Now you need some beans . Do an internet search for green coffee beans in your locale . I have been using greenbeanery.ca [a green bean source in Toronto that ships North America wide] for all the time I’ve been roasting .
Right at the moment I have Peruvian , Bolivian , and Nicaraguan on hand .. ..in it’s green state coffee beans will last for years..……. roasted they start to change flavour in a week. Some varieties say they are better for espresso , but I dark roast them all and they taste fine.

green coffee ready to roast

I made a roaster out of two dollar store stainless steel sieves . I made a wire hinge on one side , bent up a little clasp for the the other side and welded up a skid plate and long handle [see photo] , now this works fine for me , but if you don’t have access to a welder you can use a baking tray with a rim ..
Spread your beans on the tray , slide it in to your hot oven [ 500f+ ]. leave in for 4–5 minutes, pull out, turn with spatula , put back in and repeat till you get almost to your preferred colour [they keep on cooking after you get them out]]. This will take 10-15 minutes depending on how much you are trying to roast at once and the heat of your oven.

With the dollar store roaster I wait till the soot is almost burned off the dome, clear a passage down the middle of the coals , and slide the roaster back and forth with a jigging motion that keeps the beans rotating .. this will take between 8 and 12 minutes depending on the quantity and how hot your oven is . My dollar store roaster can handle 1 1/4 lb.

letting the roasted coffee mellow

Roasting coffee beans go through several stages , at first the outside layer [ the silverskin ] will flake off , you can see them turn black on the oven floor , then as the beans heat up there will be a light cracking noise as they expand slightly , a few minutes later as the beans start to colour you will have to pull them out and visually check the colour . Next you will start to see smoke and hear a more pronounced and rapid cracking , the beans are expanding again , I start looking for an oily surface on the beans…. as with the baking sheet method they will keep on cooking so take them out before they get to your desired finish. Since we do espresso I want to see a mahogany colour that will finish outside the oven to a shiny dark chocolate.

who want's some coffee?

Remove the roaster and empty the beans on to a baking sheet , at this point if they are a little light you can leave them in a heap while they smoke , then spread them out , or if they look good , spread them out , give them a light mist of water [ the commercial roasters use compressed cold air ] to stop them from going too far.
For way too many months of the year I can put the whole tray down in a snow drift and stop them in their tracks . ( How I fire my pizza oven in winter months . )

More than a few time people have said to me , “can’t you make a rotating basket so you just have to turn a handle ?”.. Perhaps you can, but it’s beyond my personal cave man engineering skills. And with the judgment calls on the doneness that require removal and inspection, I can see this getting a bit tricky.
So there you go , fantastic coffee made easy , at a price that’ll make you pinch yourself .. How cool is that?
Like with cooking , you will make mistakes , but as with cooking you can still eat your mistakes or in this case drink them .

As you would expect, the colder it is outside , the more wood and time it will take to get your oven to cooking temperature.  I add at least one more charge of wood , adding another 45 mins. your actual firing time as they say , will vary. The ambient temperature of the bricks also comes into play. Just like the thermal mass and insulation  of your oven holds the heat , it  can also hold on to that record cold snap for several days afterward.

To stop thermal shock on your ice cold bricks  [ i.e. bricks/refractories breaking]  you need a small and slow warm up fire.. I start a small fire of kindling in between two lengths of wood that won’t ignite quickly and put a wider piece of wood on top to deflect the flames away from the dome, usually for 45 mins. to an hour. The lower inner bricks should be warm to the touch before you start adding wood to make your main fire.

Using your best, dry firewood will help to generate the BTU’s you will need to get your oven hot.  As the coals build up I rake some of them towards the door to pre-heat the cold air entering the oven along the floor. Even though your oven will look and seem hot, the outer surface of your liner bricks against the insulation will be cool, and unless you lengthen the main fire time your oven will cool off quicker than in the warm weather.

OK, so all this seems like even more work, there must be some redeeming aspects to this winter cooking. …… Well there are.

For starters, your beer will never get warm!

When you burn yourself on a hot pan you will have a ready supply of snow to put on the burn.

There are no annoying insects!.

You can use the snow to stop something like roasted coffee from over roasting by placing the pan on the snow.

Your beer will get even colder!

FYI, your beer will freeze at -5C, and your wine at -14C

Tim
timstorey.ca

I read somewhere to test the temperature put you fist in to gauge the temperature … the hairs on the back of my hand singed immediately!!!! I guess that told me it was very hot!!! It is great to have a table nearby the oven to place all the pizza toppings so that people can choose and make their own. The children love to do it.

Treading the clay/sand. The base I made of local stone and for insulation laid wine bottles on their side and used a clay/sawdust slip to fix them. I also used insulation blocks to provide more insulation, then a layer of sand onto which I laid the oven bricks.

The insulation layer I made up of a little sand, clay, straw and sawdust. I found treading the mixture was exhausting and like going on a very long run. My legs ached for days afterwards. Its very good aerobic exercise and really good for keeping fit!! I used to put music on so that I could get into a rhythm when I was treading the mixture.

This was when I was completing the insulation layer of straw sand sawdust and clay.

The finished clay cob oven

I decorated the earth pizza oven with scallop shells partly because I live by the sea and also because I have a love of Spain and the scallop shell is the symbol for the pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago in the north of Spain. The sense of achievement I felt at completing the project was amazing. I had never really done anything like this before and it was a real adventure and something I never felt I would be able to do. It took patience and practice but I found it incredibly worthwhile. I have fired it up twice this year so far. I light a fire in the oven for about three hours before cooking. When the outside starts to warm up I rake some of the coals out and then push the rest to the sides. The pizza’s take about three minutes to cook to perfection. Then I put a door on to let the oven ‘soak’ a little and time for the temperature to even out. Then I rake the rest of the firewood and ashes out. Then it’s time for cooking bread rolls, the ciabatta we made last time were delicious. Sometimes I fire it up again for a short time and then put a roast in. Lamb infused with garlic and rosemary with a generous splash!!! of red wine. The flavours just melt into each other and it tastes out of this world!

The first time we made Pizza I put them on a paddle. I went to put them in the oven … the toppings flew into the oven and I was left with the pizza base!!!! I have since found out if you sprinkle rice flour on the paddle it should help with ease of delivery!! I came up with another solution … I put a piece of slate in the ordinary oven and put the pizza base in for about a minute and it firmed it enough to slide off perfectly. Once you have tasted a pizza from the oven you would never buy another pizza; they are delicious!!

Thinking of a cob oven building? Go for it!

I hope these photos inspire some of you to undertake a project of cob oven building. It is something I never thought I would be able to do… so if I can do it anyone can. Good luck!! And a big thanks to Rado and his website. His enthusiasm and expertise are phenomenal. Thanks Rado!

Some may confuse them with insulating lightweight firebricks, those are used in different applications. Dense firebricks can be cut only with diamond wheel attached to high speed handheld angle grinders, on an ordinary building brick saw or sliding drop saw for cutting bricks. Fire bricks can be chopped in half easily by using brick chisel and a couple of hits with a heavier hammer. It is fun and quick but may you want to achieve precise nice cuts hire a trade machine or buy yourself at least small size grinder. Before cutting soak the brick in water by dipping it in a bucket of water or in a wheelbarrow if you had too many. Leave the bricks in that water for 5 minutes minimum.  The cutting diamond wheel will last you for a long time if the firebricks are cut wet plus you won’t breath in any dust, and of course cutting gets a lot easier and faster!

What firebricks type to use?

When it comes to firebricks and dense refractory products composition content often Alumina (AL) ingredient is looked at which ranges ordinarily between 18% to 40% of alumina in modern product’s body. The percentage range is important for choosing the right product for the right temperature or Orton Cone but mainly if a high temps are applied. Alumina influences bulk density a lot and therefore also porosity, or if you like the weight of fire bricks. No need to apply above 26% in wood fired oven temperatures range but you can in case a low grade isn’t available to buy. Absolutely safely 18% AL amount firebricks can be used in wood ovens (you can melt and cast color metals in it too.) Furnace’s chamber build out of 18% will perform and last the same way as 30% alumina product.

Apart higher co$t, additionally, higher Alumina content grades make these bricks harder and brittle (more glossy if you like) making them absorb less steam e.g. from under pizza dough bases being cooked or bread dough. However one can get used to cooking in such oven fast.

Even though you can hear other words from a few suppliers who sell not locally manufactured product, conductivity and heat absorbing capacity is not influenced much at all by higher or lower alumina content. Higher grades won’t create magic temperature difference in cooking environment and vise versa. Main reasons for this are modern imports, one high alumina range suits all business and applications, less varieties to stock, higher markup and margin, those are the reasons if 18% to 26% brick isn’t sold by a store. Look for locally manufactured product, lower grades cost less to produce and they sell them for less. Where I buy refractory 26% AL firebricks costs $1.98 per one brick.

BTW mineral Graphite is lighter in weight by half if compared with Alumina or refractory bricks, and Graphite absorbs much more heat than firebricks (more reading about firebricks’ thermal conductivity and alternative for firebricks replacement.)

• 21% Alumina firebrick : 1850 tons Bulk density per Kg/m³ : Thermal Conductivity : 0.98 W/m.°K : 23-Orton 1620°C
• 24% Alumina firebrick : 1.925 tons Bulk density per Kg/m³ : Thermal Conductivity : 1.02 W/m.°K : 27-Orton 1640°C
• 27% Alumina firebrick : 2 tons Bulk density per Kg/m³ : Thermal Conductivity : 1.05 W/m.°K : 30-Orton 1670°C
• 33% Alumina firebrick : 2.15 tons Bulk density per Kg/m³ : Thermal Conductivity : 1.07 W/m.°K : 31 ½ -Orton 1700°C
• 38% Alumina firebrick : 2.2 tons Bulk density per Kg/m³ : Thermal Conductivity : 1.13 W/m.°K : 32 ½ -Orton 1720°C
• 40% Alumina firebrick : 2.25 tons Bulk density per Kg/m³ : Thermal Conductivity : 1.13 W/m.°K : 32 ½ -Orton 1720°C

TYPICAL TECHNICAL DATA – DENSE FIRE BRICKS

Physical Properties of Firebricks (23% alumina product)

• Bulk Density : 1915 Kg/m³
• Modulus of Rupture : 5 MPa
• Permanent Linear Change on reheating 5 hrs. @ 1400°C : -0.35%
• Cold Compressive Strength : 15 MPa
• Thermal Conductivity @ 750°C : 1.01 W/m.°K
• Apparent Porosity : 28%

Chemical Composition of Dense Firebrick – 23% Al grade

• Alumina : 23%
• Silica : 73%
• Ferric Oxide : 1.4%
• Accessory Oxides : 1.1%
• Titania : 1%
• Frits

Who is your firebrick or refractory supplier, do you have contact-s on them? And where are you located? Please leave your comments for others below…

What is Fire Clay ?

Fire clay in detail photo. Fire clay is a normal mud, simple as that, but a mud with higher Alumina (AL) content. Has usually whiter-lighter color. Whitish to yellowish, pinkish, light brownish. It’s also cheap as mud. Refractory or pottery suppliers sell it, even if it comes in dry powdered form in bags fire clay is still very heavy. You only need one bag per dome if you buy the clay in dry powdered form. Commonly Alumina content of fire clay ranges between 24% – 34% Al and Silica from 50% to 60%.

Where to find & collect fire clay in nature?

Source of fire clay from the nature- OK, maybe no one sells fireclay in your location. No worries you wouldn’t be the only person in this situation. Close your eyes and think about this…, give it a go a several times. Think of a place outside where you saw mud of a lighter color. I mean a place with water soil erosion or excavation work going on. When wet, mud is soft and sticky without any organic matter in it. Not like a top soil, don’t confuse these two (organic material would burn off.) Mud can be found usually deeper below top soil. It’s everywhere around us but can not be seen until it’s uncovered. You have to find a spot where it is not mixed with sand or rocks, and remember the light color. You need to uncover a mud which has similar structure to the play dough (when wet.) Sounds like interesting outing doesn’t it(?), I wouldn’t mind to go out with a good friend (if I had one;) and do this now. Just dig it out.

Fire clay shrinks about 10 to 15% after water dries out so take home an extra bucket more. You can make a test if you like;

1. Stretch and flatten piece of the clay into 13cm or 5 inches long strip
2. With a sharp object make 2 marks in it - EXACT 10cm or 4″ between the marks
3. Leave the clay to dry
4. Re measure when dry to see the shrinkage difference

Some Potters still keep their own clay source spots as the world’s best kept secrets. Own sourcing was very common years ago but for sure it’s many artist’s hobby and pride not buying commercially packed modern clay bodies. It’s different however with quantity producing potters. Lot’s of enthusiasts dig for the clay. Mix fire clay with sieved fine sand (Loam is great) to make the top refractory mortar! Mix it with coarse river or creek sand and make clay adobe tiles out of the stuff. Mixing send into a wet clay by walking in it, or mixing sand with clay both in dry form and then adding water in, second example requires less effort and is much more faster. As these adobes dry, they shrink a bit and should be covered with plastic so the drying speed is slower (otherwise you create propeller instead), that prevents banding and cracking. More grog is added into the clay, for adobe tiles, less shrinkage and cracking.

Never add straw or wood saw into body of adobe or mud bricks for creating wood fired oven dome, because  it burn off just as organic material does. It’s being added into heat insulation only to create honeycomb like airy lightweight effect (air is the best insulation and such material doesn’t absorb much heat!) House building bricks are different to refractory application. Clay adobe and bricks must be dense and less porous, solid and heavy. These adobes are joined by sand clay mortar – 50:50 sand:fireclay ratio. Although inner face of the dome made of adobe or mud bricks is quite fragile it cooks very nicely; if you touch it harder with e.g. a pizza paddle it drops off some clay because mud bricks and adobe are un stabilized, they would have to be bisc fired in kiln in a slow temperature speed-increase to at least 950deg. Celsius to harden. If you have a chance to fire your fireclay in an electric or gas kiln do a test firing with one adobe.

When making arches of the dome by using wooden template: If you can support dome side wall bricks to prevent the dome arch pushing on them and possibly collapsing, then the best mortar you could use is 50:50 fire clay:sand mix. Fine sieved sand that is or pebbles can give hard time in places where tiny gap between bricks is desired. Cement is used only to make the mortar to dry faster, to set as you work to progress fast. Also experts in manufacturing and selling firebricks tell you that, no need for refractory cements everywhere, these are expensive and used by industries for theirs hi temps kilns and furnaces or for castables.

Fire clay sand mortar mix dries very slowly, but if you support the side walls by pouring concrete cladding behind them, leave it cure and then form arched ceiling using the 50:50 fireclay:sand mortar is the best option. When I go fast I use a little of Portland cement in the mortar so it’s setting in 2 hours. Portland cement is already a bit refractory but it’s wise to replace one half of the amount with lime. Lime is calcium and it takes over the cement when it burns out in heat. Old ovens were built using only fire clay with lime not cement. These ovens work forever, many of them are being fired daily for decades and never cool down.

Where else can I find Fire Clay ?

Soft pottery clay body – usually 10 – 15Kg per packaging. Ask for clay with more alumina content, stoneware clay, and it can be coarse not too fine. Normally it is whitish color. You don’t need to go for expensive clay, just pick one type for higher temperature and light in color. REMEMBER: don’t be confused, when you see the soft-wet clay in bags it can be darker but when it dries it’ll change to lighter color. Then there are also clays which are white when wet. Usually the shop has dry samples. Don’t forget to ask for clay which they stored for a long time, it’ll be harder in plastic bags, not too fresh in pottery terms, potters don’t want dry clay to work with when throwing on potters wheels so you can get a better price to pay for it too. Often they run discounted sales of these nearly dry clays to get rid of it. So you brought your clay home now … but what to do next you may ask? Take the clay out of plastics bags. Use wire or stronger fishing line to cut it in thin slices. Leave it to dry. After about a week in an airy place the clay will be dry. Sit on some low comfortable soft seat on the driveway and use a hammer to brake it into almost powder. It’s not hard at all but it takes some time. You will need about a bucket to mix the mortar, and half a bucket for the sand : fire clay (50:50) bed to lay hearth floor bricks onto and level them up nicely into one smooth surface.

Substitute for firebricks can be old red clay solid bricks. In ovens these alternative red clay bricks will heat up, cool down, cook, re fire, absorb conduct store and hold the heat from wood fire and perform the same way as proper refractory firebricks do. If you can not locate fire bricks where you are or for any reason obtain them, Red Clay Bricks will perform much the same way in wood fire temperature levels and can be used instead.

How do I see it’s the right alternative for firebricks?

The replacement bricks must be of this type, old solids. Clay body is the same on the brick’s inside as it is on the outside. Break or cut one of the bricks you find in half to see what’s in the middle. New products are made out of cheap clay bodies whilst only on the outside a decorative clay slip is applied and then the bricks are fired in kiln – you couldn’t use bricks like that. The right alternate also shouldn’t be burnt, if you saw too much black-carbon color in the center don’t use such brick – it would be either over fired and brittle or made out of lesser quality clay. But a few little burnt spots will be fine. Working with red clay solid bricks is equivalent to work with refractory firebricks, all matters remain the same only bricks are different.

Where to find these old red solid bricks?

Look around in demolition yards for instance they often stock these red clay bricks. Read advertisements in papers, people very often sell for fraction of price or giveaway exactly this type of old bricks, and other great building material left over from other projects or from cleaning up. There are always few firebrick replacements to be seen here you just have to watch it. You can buy 200 of red clay bricks even for 20 or 30 bucks in total and have lucky day. By the way these old bricks are easy to clean with hammer and brush because in the past brickies didn’t add much cement into mortar if any. Tables with firebricks physical properties.

Hello to all, this oven design is FANTASTIC to say the least. Here’s a few shots of the oven, pizza, leg of lamb, YUMMY! I am SO glad I went with this, I fire up at 10:30 Sat. Morning after coffee, get things ready for pizza at noon, prep the bread for after pizza time while the wife gets going on what she wants to roast for dinner. Cooking time well organized. It is so easy, and the cooking time with all the insulation effort has been well worth it. After cooking dinner one Sat., I closed the oven door, Sunday, LATE afternoon, around 6 pm I went to the oven, opened the door to check the temp, it was still at 250 degrees Fahrenheit = 121.1 degrees Celsius, that was 31 hours after firing, a good size arm load of wood!!! If you let it cool a bit, you could dehydrate fruits and veggies real nicely!!!

Rado,
I’ve thanked you several times for your help and quick response when I was a bit puzzled on which way to go. And thanks for the opportunity to share such a AWESOME design with me and who ever else was smart enough to order your CD. It’s a great guide to perfection. How you were able to respond to me so quickly was beyond me, it was like you were sitting at your computer waitng.

Folks,
I went with the Masterly Tail (fire chamber size and firebricks structure) but as you can see I used what was given to me for the Facade. I also found several deals at the brick yards clearance section which most brick yards DO have. If anyone needs help of any kind I would be glad to assist. I would like to build another one just for fun.

As you can see, cooking in this oven is a GREAT time!! We just finished pizza for lunch, and after letting the oven cool for an hour or so, I put two loaves of bread made with half Spelt flour and half Bread flour. They will cook for about 40 minutes and then I will load three LARGE chicken breast’s that we will eat for dinner, OH, the wife just asked me to put in a few cookies ( on the pizza stone) for Grandma to have with her coffee. HA! What a BLAST!!! If any one is thinking of building one of these ovens, think no more, get busy, have RADO send you a cd, You won’t be sorry!!! FOLLOW HIS PLAN!!! You will LOVE IT!!!

I’m located in North Fort Myers, Florida.

Rado, your design is by far the best I’ve seen, I researched this for several months before ordering your cd. Now I can’t say I made it as perfect as yours ( because you are the man!!) but it works fine, it takes one and a half hours to get to pizza temp. Easy to do. With seasoned oak firewood or gum branches, etc. I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy!!!

Thanks once again.

Greg

Picture 1. The finished chimney – And also the render on the whole wall is done and it is drying up nicely.

Picture 2. Blackwood slab for making pizza/bread paddle – At the same time I decided to make a wooden peel for loading the pizzas. We already have a metal one for unloading but I thought a wooden one would be fun to make.

Picture 3. Milling marks, making pizza/bread peel – To make the paddle I had a slab of blackwood (Acacia) which I had cut at our farm back in the 1980s. I traced the shape of the metal peel and partially cut it out with a jigsaw and circular saw for the straight bits. Then with an electric plane and a sander I finished the surfaces before cutting the integral handle. Then I used a router with a bullnose bit to smooth the edges of the handle but kept the milled marks made by the chainsaw when it was originally slabbed. Sorry I got too busy to take more pics of the finished product, but the final process of making the peel was to rub olive oil into the wood. It took slightly over an hour to make this wooden padddle.

Picture 4. Ready for business – Carbon burn-off full heat up. I started the fire at the front then moved it to the back and then across ready for pizza cooking. The ash was raked across and I swept and gave a quick wash to the bricks.

Picture 5. The first of three pizzas – This pizza was almost perfect. I think we’re getting the hang of the whole thing. We made the dough the night before and kept it in the fridge until about three hours before we used it. You could hold a slice by the edge with no sagging. We’ve also learned to lift the pizza close to the roof for a few seconds to perfect-finish off the topping before unloading the pizzas.

Picture 6. Chook in the firey furnace – It was probably still a little hot for the chicken but we roasted it vertically but close to the door. We still had to add alfoil to stop it from burning.

Picture 7. Cooked chook – But it was however amazingly moist and full of flavour.

Here I am at 50, still in the pink of my condition, beautiful wife, a job that I love, great friends that I don’t have to see too often, gorgeous house in the middle of the woods, a Ford Ranger, with Bruce Springsteen on Sirius radio, healthy kids, great garden and all the elements around it to inspire me to create many other things. But is that it ?. Is it a: Life’s over, time for golf moment. The patio door has been installed, the deck has been painted, the floors polished, the dog’s groomed, the freezer’s full, and TVO’S ON. There must be something else that will help me go through old age with dignity. Internet could inspire me but the whole surfing thing gets me dizzy, I am too much of an outdoor guy to fickle on a keyboard all day long. Although on my free time what I usually do is find peace and slowly browse through a library spending sometimes whole afternoons just making sure that my choice of book will carry me into some passionate state of mind.

A book on the native north American women brought my attention recently and with great fascination I was amazed on how their role as family leaders were significant. Their cooking techniques is what kept my attention and with that, I started to get interested in the ovens that they used to cook their food. Called Hocho, the Indians- made- rock oven seemed to me the very best way to cook many types of food. So from that in mind I knew that a minimum effort on the internet would lead me to some fine information on how to either get one or hopefully how to build one.

Don’t always look for the top search results on Google, it’s mostly guys who push their stuff. We’ll come at your house and we’ll fix it up for you, fire included, you won’t have to miss a minute of American Idol. Want to pay now or later.
-No , I think I’ll pass

More than acquiring such traditional oven I think the pleasure of building one with all the elements that surrounds my house was what made the tick.
Then somewhere around page 242 on the search results, traditionaloven.com showed up.
And beside being a terrific web site and a super cool dude, (a Czechoslovakian Aussie, it doesn’t get cooler than that, beside my Swedish Jew friend Danny) now only did I see exactly what I wanted, but mostly I saw the future of internet. Once the Stock and P..n era is over.

Rado is the man..

Louis Patenaude
The Catalan sheepdog guy
www.aupieddelapatte.com

PS: In a hurry to get your cd and start building my oven as soon as possible I wrote this little article, hope you’ll enjoy.
Tried not to be too conventional.

Merci

Articles for plans exchange.

In the courtyard, rendered oven with the wall. We made three pizzas as appetizers. This is the still unfinished courtyard. We’ll be finishing the render then paving and planting. I’m going to extend the chimney as you can see. That’s Sam on the left, my rendering son. Others are Anton and my daughter Allie relaxing on the sitting wall.

Here’s Belinda checking progress. How do you like my improvised brush? Still need to get a proper one but this did the job (sort of).

Here’s a close up of the beautiful handle of the raking tool made for me by my neighbour Paul.

Culinary arts with chicken and cauliflower. Next course was a butterfly chicken with a mix of parsley, sage, garlic and olive oil under the skin. In front is cauliflower with paprika, garlic and oil.

The chicken cooked in about half an hour and was juicy and tender. I rotated it from time to time and it had alfoil over it for most of the time.

Then later on we baked some cibatta after raking out the coals and cleaning the floor of the oven.

Finally for the meal tonight I made a pumpkin risotto in the oven.

Tomorrow morning the oven will still have plenty of heat so I’ll think of something to cook then! Culinary art of preparing a fine pumpkin risotto …

- Keith