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Our most popular book, Build Your Own Earth Oven, came out in 1998 – or was it ’97? The much-improved third edition offers a simpler, more efficient, better oven, and better bread. New ovens, methods, techniques, questions and answers at "hot from the oven". See what author Kiko Denzer is up to at his page.
Max Edleson brings a marvelous DVD from Argentina that describes and explains natural building principles and many unusual methods by which to apply them. The DVD features one of Max's mentors, Argentina's master builder Jorge Belanco. Watch Mud, Hands, A House — and build your own.
Ann Sayre Wiseman, author of Making Things, is working on a new book on how to work with your dreams using simple, intuitive methods that work. Tentative title? Don't Argue with Your Dreams! It's a great technique to use with kids' nightmares. See Ann's Nightmare Help for more. Ann will also be presenting at this year's dream conference at the American Association for the Study of Dreams, in Berkeley, CA.
Interest in wood-fired ovens, school gardens, real food, real community, earthen building – learning by doing – continues to grow, as we do. Yes, we're responsible!...as a raindrop is for the sea. It is fascinating to participate. Much of what we learn comes through readers and friends, so tell us about your creative projects related to any title, or related interest. See these pages to share your ovens, projects with kids, and workshops. Contact us! and help improve the site!
Featured Books:
Kiko Denzer : Ovens
Roberto Monge’s Oven Story
Roberto Monge’s father – Alfredo Del Transito Monge Menjivar – grew up dirt poor in a jungle village in El Salvador, one of 8 surviving children in a family of 14. By good luck and hard work, he earned a law degree, found paying work, got married and started a family. I didn’t know him, but according to his son Roberto, the elder Monge felt indebted to his campesino roots; when he had to choose between a military dictatorship or a revolutionary people’s movement, he chose the latter, later assuming the position of Attorney General of the Poor in the …
Lily Gordon, 16, helps build ovens in Tanzania
David S. Cargo, who assembles info about community ovens for the St. Paul Bread Club sent me a link about Lily Gordon, a remarkable young woman, now 16, who has been helping villagers in Tanzania to build ovens so they can make their own bread (previously, bread had to be transported from so far that it would often be inedible when it arrived).
At the age of 11, Lily Gordon started raising funds for the village of Shirati, Tanzania. For her 11th birthday, instead of gifts, she asked her friends to bring money for the children of Shirati. The party raised $1,300. …
Rainer Warzecha, sculptor, oven mason, collaborator, Germany
Some years ago now, I got an unexpected email from Elke Cole, a German-born architect now living in Canada, whom I had originally met at the first Natural Building Colloquium in Oregon, in the mid 90s. Elke was traveling in Germany, where she’d come across a public art project in a park in Berlin. It was full of earthen sculptures made by a German artist named Rainer Warzecha. At the time, I was collecting stories and photos to expand a little pamphlet about earthen art projects (Dig Your Hands in the Dirt). But most of what I had were …
Ian Miller, baker, oven builder, translator
Ian’s Miller’s oven story (adapted from his translator’s note for the German edition of Build Your Own Earth Oven):
I saw my first earthen oven in Santa Cruz, California, where I was studying Agroecology. The fellow student who built it had a small bread business selling bread that he baked in it. My studies in Santa Cruz led to an internship on a biodynamic farm in Austria and there I got to know whole-grain sourdough bread and learned to bake it. I eventually learned that this bread was best out of a wood-fired oven but since I had never …
Ovens, builders, a new (oven) book for German readers
Out of the blue one day I got a phone call from a guy named Ian Miller. He said he had built a few ovens, baked a fair amount of bread, was married to an Austrian and (among other things) interested in translating Build Your Own Earth Oven into German. With that began an adventure that is now resulting in a new (German!) edition of the book, published by Stocker Verlag, out of Austria (they also publish Austrian permaculturist Sepp Holzer, which makes it even more of an honor). Very interesting to let go of the book and let someone …
New Community Oven in New Jersey
HANDS stands for Housing and Neighborhood Development Services. They work out of Orange, New Jersey to try and reclaim dilapidated houses and other “eyesore properties,” and return them to the neighborhood as affordable homes and community assets. They also work with individual people and neighborhoods, and are creating an Arts District in a former industrial area called the Valley. A recent Google Alert brought in notice of a new community oven they built, and the following story from their quarterly report:
It started as a dream idea of our Executive Director, Pat Morrissy: “Let’s build a community outdoor, wood fired …
Adjusting mass for optimal performance
Here’s a valuable perspective on the benefits of smaller, easier, cheaper, “faster-cooling” ovens, and a working baker’s comparison w/the classic Alan Scott brick oven design (which isn’t always the best option for someone who wants to start small and simple).
The baker is Noah Elbers, who runs a small bakery in New Hampshire. There are some nice photos of him and his oven(s) on the web, but he’s clearly spending his time in the bakery rather than on the computer — hurrah! He does participate in the brickoven group on yahoogroups, which is where this comment came from.
It is …
Terra Preta and “the Biochar Solution”
The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change, by Albert Bates
A review by Kiko Denzer
Living trees lock up carbon, and burning releases it. That’s the conflict-ridden equation of global warming. Albert Bates has been at the front lines of the warming conflict since his 1990 title, Climate in Crisis. In this book, he defines “biochar” as “charred (pyrolized) organic matter intended to be applied to soil in farming or gardening,” and argues that partial burning of waste wood and other carbonaceous matter can effectively “lock up” carbon and store it underground in a human-fired echo of what …
Alan Scott, Brick Ovens, A Marriage
Alan Scott’s Ovencrafters provides DIY masonry oven plans and hardware (doors and pyrometers) for bakers wanting to start their own small business, or just to bake large amounts of bread and other food for family and friends. It was set up on Gandhian principles of “Policy with principles, commerce with morality, wealth through work, and science with humanity.” Many ovens and many small bakeries now feed good bread to their communities as a direct result, and the book Alan inspired and co-wrote, The Bread Builders, has become a bible for a growing circle of builder/bakers.
Alan, an Aussie who inadvertently …
How Wide A Door?
This seems to be one of the bits of the book that could be improved in the next edition.
Yesterday, I got it again in this lovely note from a lady named June:
Hello Kiko:
I am a 68 year old woman making my first mud oven following the design in your book – I’m really excited about it, and have a question. Does the width of the door matter? A friend gave me a beautiful peel ahead of the oven and it is 16 inches wide. I am making a 27 inch oven and would like to know if …
Kiko’s Recommended Oven Links
This is a somewhat random list of sites and sources of information — mostly free. It also bounces around between earthen and brick ovens, traditional and modern, simple and complex. If you have any recommendations, let me know!
— Kiko
The Masonry Heater Association’s oven page: A goldmine!
Le Four a pain de Jean-Marie: Mobile ovens ala Francaise
Brick oven plans: free from Forno Bravo (vendor of hi-end modular ovens)
“Nifty, easy-to-make (earth) oven”: the quick and dirty version, as printed in Mother Earth News in 02 (before I got really serious about insulation!)
Bread Ovens of Quebec: a classic …
Dan Wing on Trailers for Mobile Ovens
Much as I try to discourage them (see pp 98-101 of Build Your Own Earth Oven, 3d ed.), lots of people want to put their oven on a trailer and tow it long distances at high speed. Dan Wing, co-author of The Bread Builders and builder of fine gypsy trailers, as well as the maker of a well-travelled oven, kindly wrote up a thoughtful and practical set of notes on the safe and proper construction of hi-speed auto-trailers suitable for heavy ovens. It’s a downloadable word file that you can get by clicking here: Oven trailers. If you want to read …
Noah Elbers on earth vs brick ovens
Noah is a working baker, builder, and farmer who has built and used earthen ovens, a classic Alan Scott oven, and now a very fancy Spanish Llopis oven. Here he provides very clear and detailed data on the differences in fuel consumption and food production between earth and (massive) brick. In short, he explains exactly why an Alan Scott oven may not be the best option for a home- or small-scale baker.
Elbers owns and runs The Orchard Hill Bakery in New Hampshire. He participates in the brickoven group on yahoogroups, which is where this comment came from, but as …
