Yesterday was bread baking day. The wind was out of the south and when that happens the oven does not draw very well and I get a lot of smoke in my face when I first fire it up. I've developed a technique now where I lay up a fire the day before we are going to bake. I start with a bed of old coals that I have dried on a screen in the green house. On that, I lay out some crumpled up newspaper and then some kindling and finally some fairly good size wood. While I'm doing that, Marlene is doing the preliminary steps of starting the sour dough base of our seed bread. On baking day, I start the fire at 11:00 and keep feeding it on a regular basis until 2:00 pm. I use any wood from tree trimming around our property mixed with recycled 2 x 4s all cut to about 10 inch lengths. At about 2:30 the fire has burned down to a nice bed of coals that I then rake out into a bucket of water. I wash the bed of the oven with a wet rag on the end of a stick and insert the door so the heat is retained and allowed to soak uniformly throughout the walls and floor.
An hour later, the oven temperature is down to 550 to 580 degrees and the bread goes in. After 25 minutes of baking, we check the internal temperature of the bread and if it has reached 190 degrees, the bread is done and we take it out to cool. The remaining heat is used for baking beans or some other dish that we can have for dinner or later use.
