Baking the Bread

This morning, when I first got outside, the temperature of the clay was 32 degrees. It was really clear and cold last night. I started the fire about 7:30 am with the idea to dry the oven and have it ready for Marlene's bread by happy hour this afternoon.
The happy hour was moved from it's regular spot to a gathering by the oven. Marlene says, up to that point it was kind of fun. Now everyone is here and we're still in the middle of an experiment. I hope this works.

The temperature got up to around 500 degrees inside the oven. The floor is very hot so the first test will be some pita bread.

That worked pretty well. We broke it into small pieces and everybody got a taste. The coments were, "this is really good!"

Now comes the real test. This is a loaf of wild yeast whole wheat bread. Marlene has been carrying the starter with us and she mixed the dough last night. It has been raising throughout the day while the oven has been heating up.

Hey, this looks pretty good. Let's see how it tastes.

Boy, what a relief! The oven works. The taste test was a success. So much so, that I didn't even get a picture of people sampling the final product.

Now the question is, where do we build one of these back home. The book says the second one is easier.

We'll see how it goes.