Allison Kerwin checks to see if the pizza is ready in her backyard adobe oven. She invites friends to bring their own dough to bake when she fires it up several times a year. The roof protects the cured, but not fired, mud-brick exterior from the elements. Several courses of cement block bring the oven up to waist level. The inside of the blocks was filled with small granite stones. The floor of the oven is fire-brick. The clay for the mud-bricks which shape the oven was hauled from Charlestown, N.H. Special doors were purchased to retain the heat. Photo by Susan Laughlin
The fragrant bread that comes from an outdoor adobe brick oven is “the way it should be,” says Allison Kerwin of Hancock. The crust is crisp and hearty from the steam created by the residual moisture in the bricks.
After making bread dough with a traditional recipe, it bakes in about 15 minutes in the 800-degree heat, says Kerwin. To prepare the oven, she counts back five hours from the time she wants to bake — it takes that long to build the heat in the firebrick.
New Hampshire Magazine
Whoa, that would be some bread. I wonder if I made the oven if my wife would fire it up and use it? Should I ask?
Suzie
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