Sunday, February 13, 2011

Primitive Outdoor Oven






My brother recently had a heart attack that forced him to cut back on his activities for a while during his
recooperation.  During that time, he still kept his mind busy planning his activities for when he could resume his daily routines.  He constantly dreamed of building an outdoor oven.  Once he was well enough to put his plan into action, he built the outdoor fireplace that you see here.  That's him putting one of his famous pizzas in the oven.  He makes the crust completely from scratch and let me tell you, his pizzas are awesome!  He lined the oven with fire brick that holds the heat.  He builds a fire in the oven and once it is good and hot, he rakes the coals to the back of the oven.  He then sets his baking pan on the heated firebricks and puts a little door over the oven opening to hold in the heat.  He has also become quite the expert on bread baking in the oven as well.  He bakes the bread in a covered cast iron pot.  The bread is tender on the inside and crispy and brown on the outside.  It is heavenly spread with butter and homemade  blackberry jelly that his wife, Faye makes.  I remember once our families were on a camping trip and my brother and I decided that we would cook supper outdoors for our families.  It poured the rain that evening and we cooked under a canopy.  Despite the weather, we had fried chicken and all the fixins' that evening.  Another time, he invited us to his campsite where he baked  a pie inside a cast iron pot over a campfire.  The lid on the pot was indented and he filled the indentation with hot coals and set the whole pot in the hot coals.  It made a perfectly golden brown pie in his little "oven".  My brother and his wife frequently go camping with their horse club.  They like the old way of doing things and frequently try out some of the old methods of cooking. 



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