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Cob Oven Archives - Page 2 of 3 - The Year of Mud

Mar 16
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Full 2014 Natural Building Workshop Schedule is Up!

By Natural Building Workshops, Cob Oven, Timber Framing

Outdoor Cob Oven

Towering timber frames and hot pizza pie… oh my! (Sorry, that was a weak attempt at poetry.) But hopefully it paints a colorful picture of our upcoming natural building courses this year in 2014. Our full schedule is up, and we’ve added a Timber Frame Workshop and Cob Oven Workshop to our offerings. Both of these classes are in our new and beautiful location of Berea, Kentucky. Specifically, these two workshops are being hosted at the Clear Creek Festival grounds, home to an incredible arts & music festival and a developing off-grid homestead.

Perhaps you’ll join us this summer in raising an old school timber frame pavilion? Or building an outdoor oven with cob?

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Oct 06
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Pizza… and More Cob Oven Workshop Photos

By Natural Building Workshops, Cob Oven
Outdoor Pizza Oven: Fresh Pizza

A particularly bubbly pizza gets topped with fresh basil during our pizza party

Our latest group of Cob Oven Workshop students departed last week with full bellies, new oven building skills, and with a greater glimpse of life in an intentional community. These 3 day workshops are very fun for us, and I foresee planning more for the future. Can we pull off doing a few in 2014? I sure hope so…

Each time we build another cob oven, I learn something new. The same applies to when we go to actually use the oven, as well. Our pizza is slightly improving every time. Mmm..

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Sep 24
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Like Icing on a Cake: Applying Finish Clay Plaster

By Cob Oven, Clay Plaster
Cob Oven - Clay Plaster

Applying the finish clay plaster to our cob oven

Busy busy busy. It seems like the story of our lives doesn’t change very much. I have lots of catching up to do. But as I sit here and avoid work for a mere moment, let me share this recent photo of our finish clay plaster application to our outdoor cob oven. Smooth clay plaster looks amazing, but I think it looks its finest right after it goes on. It’s like literally putting icing on your walls (or oven, or whatever you happen to be plastering). Love it. One day, I’d love to get some more serious training on how to do clay plaster on an expert level.

I hope to have a brandy new outdoor cob oven how-to written up soon, not to mention make a few updates about the state of Strawtron, our straw bale house we’ve been chugging away on. We also have other big news coming down the pipes. Keep posted, as always.

Sep 20
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Our Inaugural Cob Oven Workshop: Mud, Fire, and Fun!

By Natural Building Workshops, Cob Oven
Cob Oven Bread

Baked bread fresh from the cob oven

A few short days ago, our first Cob Oven Workshop came to an end. The workshop was filled with mud, fire, and a whole lot of fun. Thankfully, our participants agreed! Folks got down and dirty as we built an oven from the hearth upwards. We learned all about how to make a good batch of cob, using natural and recycled materials effectively, plastering, how to fire an oven and make good use of the ample heat it provides, and lots more. We sure did eat extremely well, too.

Here are a few nice testimonials from just a couple of our lovely people from the inaugural workshop:

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Sep 04
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Twenty Pizzas Later…

By Cob Oven
Outdoor Pizza Oven

The first fire in our new outdoor cob oven

In preparation for our Cob Oven Workshops, we did a “test” pizza party over the weekend. Over 20+ pizzas, 4 loaves of bread, 2 pans of zucchini bread, 2 cookie loafs, 1 pan of brownies, and 1 roast duck (homegrown!) later… I’d say it was a success. The oven was still holding over 200° 18 hours later! Wowzers. This is why I love outdoor cob ovens: they are extremely easy and cheap to build, you can take serious advantage of lots of heat to cook delicious food, and it’s an awesome social experience to gather around the oven while pizzas are flying out. An outdoor oven has all the right ingredients.

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Aug 25
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Make Your Own Wooden Pizza Peel

By Woodworking, Cob Oven, Hand Tools
Wooden Pizza Peel

Homemade wooden pizza peel ready for action

This week, I remembered our nearly finished outdoor oven is almost useless without a certain few tools. Unlike a conventional oven, you don’t just pop open the door, throw on an oven mitt or two, and take out your food. The best and most exciting part of baking in a cob oven is sliiiiding pizza and bread in and out with a pizza peel, a long handled paddle for transferring food in and out without burning your fingertips off in a 800°+ cooking environment. So I decided to take a couple hours to make a wooden pizza peel with a piece of oak I had sighted earlier for the purpose. Here’s how I made it.

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Aug 08
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The Return of the Outdoor Cob Oven

By Cob Oven
Outdoor Cob Oven

Building another and better outdoor cob oven

It’s been several years since we have been without an outdoor cob oven at our disposal, and I have dearly missed having it around! The original “$20 pizza oven” that we built back in 2009 had to be “moved” since it was in the way of drainage work that needed addressing around Gobcobatron.

But at last, the time has come. In the coming week or two, we intend to build another outdoor pizza oven, better than the last. The time, we have a proper shelter to shield it against the elements (see above!), and we’ll be making several other modifications for creating a lean, mean pizza baking machine. Er… it’s actually kinda big, and distinctly un-machine like, but whatever.

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Dec 17
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Learn How To Build a Cob Oven: Join Our 2013 Cob Oven Workshop!

By Natural Building Workshops, Cob Oven

We are happy to announce our first building workshops of 2013 — come learn how to build your own backyard, wood fired oven in our Cob Oven Workshop.

In September and October, visit Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri for our latest three day natural building course — learn cob oven construction essentials, and get a great glimpse into sustainable living in a well-known ecovillage community in the process.

Outdoor ovens are extremely popular, and for good reason. A cob oven can be built with inexpensive natural and recycled materials, and the results are fantastic. No pizza party will ever be the same again!

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Oct 17
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Michael Pollan’s ‘Cob Oven and a 36 Hour Dinner Party’

By Cob Oven

Here’s something interesting from the New York Times. Michael Pollan has written up an essay about a 36 hour dinner party, based around the use of a cob oven, no less. Pollan notes that the party’s inspiration was ” the communal ovens still found burning in some towns around the Mediterranean, centers of social gravity where, each morning, people bring their proofed, or risen, loaves to be baked. (Each loaf bears a signature slash so you can be sure the one you get back is your own.) But after the bread is out of the oven, people show up with a variety of other dishes to wring every last B.T.U. from the day’s fire: pizzas while the oven is still blazing and then, as the day goes on, gentle braises or even pots of yogurt to capture the last heat and flavors of the dying embers.”

I love stuff like this. I love food, people getting together to cook, using wood heat, quality ingredients, mmm, yea. Interesting. And of course, it’s especially cool that this group used an outdoor cob oven for their cooking!

Don’t forget to check out my how to build your own outdoor cob oven for pizza and bread.