If you like primitive cooking you should check out this video I found on building an earth oven. Jas. Townsend and Son, Inc. has a great series of videos on primitive cooking. There also a great company to deal with.
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Thanks that's a great resource. I always watch Walter Staib on pbs. It's great to glimpse how people cooked in the past. -
I've seen that video before. It does sound like a fun project.Comment
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Very Cool. That would be fun to make some time. SOoooooo much effort went into cooking back in the day.
Makes me think........What will our Great-Great-Great-Grandkids think of when they see video and pictures of us cooking BBQ by standing outside feeding a fire surrounded by smoke?Comment
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In fact....I wonder what Breadhead would say about this video. Baking bread in the oven they made. Pretty cool.
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Jas. Townsend and Son made a whole series on cooking most of them are on youtube love to watch and learn the old ways of doing thing. I have always wanted a reflector cooker like the one he uses in this video to cook a bird.
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My wife designed, led the construction of, and did a lot of the hard work building one of these for a church group in Newbury MA a few years ago. I led the first cook - pizza of course. We were lucky there were a few veterans around. It was about twice the size of what was in the first video, and worked great. Unfortunately, I'd be surprised if those people were still using it. Just not coming from the same head-space.Last edited by EdF; March 22, 2017, 05:49 PM.Comment
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You get your wood fire burning, push it to the back with attention to warming the whole space. Once you're at temp, bake away. I'd guess it's the same with most wood-fired ovens. The heat lasts a long time, so once you're done with your main cook, you can put things in for the rest of the night - pumpernickel, ..
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building one of these is on my short list of things to do. I basically have to just get off my butt and do it.Comment
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Yeah this would be a lot of fun. I bet they get some colorful characters at those meets ups.Comment
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You should have seen the folks I use to meet when I went to Mountain man meets when I was younger with my dad. lost of fun and lots of primitive cooking set ups and so on.Comment
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If you have a ready supply of clay, then this type oven is fun! We built a small one a few years ago just from green saplings and gray Cook Inlet clay from the nearby mud flats. Once dry, it worked like a charm.
We just built it to experiment with the concept, and had a ball. It is now collapsed, as we weren't building to last. Cool thing is, that when its useful life is over, it goes back to the earth from whence it came. No mess, poisons, etc.
I recommend trying it at least once, as it is a ball! Especially with kids or grand kids.Comment
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Being a Pit Member and addicted With the dreaded MCS, do I have to now build my own oven and start making bread to go with the meat that i smoke.? Does this ever end? Well I guess it does if you run out of money and time and food to cook. Cool topic and information. Started to go into a nostalgia thing about youthful memories but will save for later time.Comment
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Richard P ... Its much easier than you think it is. Just ask the other Pit members that learned from the how to make sourdough bread thread.Comment
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EdF commented
March 24th, 2017, 03:55 PM
Hey Breadhead, have you ever made wild starter by leaving a flour and water mix out in your kitchen? My wife did that some years ago, and it was so good that it's still being passed around in New England.
I've never done that no. The reason being is that if you leave your sourdough culture exposed to the open air it is vulnerable to whatever bacteria or insect that is in the area. If you leave a sourdough starter uncovered in your kitchen you will have a swarm of fruit flies quickly. Then there's regular flies, mosquitos, the list goes on. Wild yeast is not the only bacteria that is very prevalent in your house and in your community.
When a foriegn bacteria enters your culture the resident bacteria has to have a battle to eliminate the intruder and often they will quit producing Co2 and alcohol during that battle. It will appear as if your starter has died, which it may have, but it surely will go dormant for a while.
There's enough wild yeast in your bag of flour you buy at the grocery store to ignite your starter. It's left over from the milling process when they grind the wheat to make flour. It's enough to start the chemical reaction in your bowl that you've mixed the flour and water in. There's yeast on your hands. There's yeast all around your house and in your yard. The local yeast will invade the foreign yeast that came in your flour bag though. The local yeast will ALWAYS dominate your sourdough culture.
That starter your wife started in New England... if someone sent me a few ounces of it here in Hermosa Beach, Ca my local yeast would invade it immediately. The local yeast would eventually win that battle simply because of its abundance. Within a couple of months it would be a completely different sourdough culture.
Thats why I'm amazed at WHY people, newbies, fall for the hustle of buying sourdough "starter kits" from San Francisco bread baking companies. It is a complete hustle and you will not have the starter they sent you 2 weeks later.
My first sourdough "starter kit" I bought from King Arthur Flour Company. Their pitch was this starter kit is from our 230 year old sourdough culture. I'm sure it was, but I since learned that my local wild yeast invaded it immediately and changed that 230 year old culture quickly into a Hermosa Beach culture.
Making your own starter in your own house where your local wild yeast resides is extremely inexpensive and requires very, very little hands on effort. It will thrive better if it is ALWAYS kept covered tightly from the open air. Oxygen IS NOT a required element for a sourdough starter EVER, it not part of the chemical equation.Comment
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