Build ovens from clay

What you need:

• ½ m³ of clay
• ¼ m³ sawdust
• ¼ m³ of sand
• ¼ m³ gravel (coarse-grained)
• Press clamping plate
• Firebricks for one square meter of space

The clay oven has a long history

• As early as 2000 BC, bread was baked by making flour porridge from mashed crowns - but not in an oven made of clay, but on a hot stone. The invention of above-ground ovens did not come about until 1000 years before Christ.

• Later on, the first clay ovens were built inside these houses on large castles and farms, because a simple one Bauer couldn't simply build such a stove because the risk of fire in the farmhouses that were too small was too great was.

• But outside the houses the peasants could build an oven with the body on the outside and the opening inside the house. However, the risk of fire was still very high, so that the first community bakeries were built.
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• Nowadays, having a clay oven in your garden is a luxury and it brings some cozy ones Spending hours with yourself when you enjoy your home-baked bread with friends in the warming oven can.

Build your clay oven yourself

1. Start making a foundation for your clay oven by excavating 1x1 meter of soil and laying it out with sand and crushed stone, and then building the foundation with firebricks. In the final top layer, fill the foundation with pebbles.


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2. Then make your adobe bricks by mixing the clay with water. Since this is often very difficult, you should either do this with a mason's drill or with your feet. When you have smoothly mixed the clay with water, mix in two parts of clay and one part of chopped straw, sand and sawdust. Use this mixture to form your clay bricks, which should be about the size of bricks.
3. Now place your clay bricks on the gravel layer so that there are no joints. If joints are still visible, you should compact them with clay. Make sure that you leave an opening for the door in the front, so that you only brick three whole walls and in the front only the sides next to the later opening.
4. Let the individual wall layers dry a little so that the mud bricks connect. However, when you brick the next layer, you have to moisten the top layer of clay again. Once you have finished your furnace in this way, start a small fire so that the bricks dry out well.
5. But don't forget to make two holes the size of stove pipes so that the smoke can later escape. You build one hole in the rear wall of the oven and a second in the rear upper baking dome that will be built later.
6. When the fire is out and the stove is well dry, it goes to the building the lower dome, which together with the opening forms the furnace. Shape a press clamp so that it forms an arch and place it on your outer wall of the furnace, that you can wall up the press clamping with clay and bricks until you have a smooth surface again.
7. You can either open the furnace opening with a metal door that you can cut to size in a locksmith's shop, or you close them regularly with stones, whereby a metal door is certainly easier to close in the long run handle is.
8. Let your clay oven dry well before you wall up the tower. To do this, take your bent press clamp out of the lower area of ​​the furnace and place it above the Open the furnace to build a dome again, which was closed at the back (except for the stovepipe hole) and opened at the front is.
9. When everything is ready and you have been able to remove the clamping plate, plaster your oven completely with clay. To properly burn out the stove, light a fire inside. Leave the door open while doing this. If cracks develop as a result of the burnout, you should compact them again later with clay and burn them out again.