I have started gathering the items for my mud oven. So if anyone has any info to submit on how to do it, preferably from experience, then now is the time to do it.
I brought back a cement ring from the farm yesterday and left orders for the workers to dig and fill several bags with nice heavy clay soil and several more bags with sand. Shall pick them up next weekend and be able to start the week after.
My intentions are to place the cement ring thustly….
This way, it is off the ground and you do not have to bend down to get the tucker out.
Fill it with sand, compact it down and place fire bricks on top of the sand, inside the rings and level with the top of the ring. This theoretically then gives me a nice solid fire bricked base for the oven floor.
Then, I shall place a pile of damp sand on top of this and mould into a dome shape. Then place a bamboo chicken cage over it, fill up so the cage is full of sand and firm. Cover this with smooth banana leaves and then start laying the clay over all of this to the required thickness….still gotta research this.
Then, when the clay is hard, the sand can be dug out via the door and the chicken cage and banana leaves shall simply burn with the first fire. Think you have to slowly increase the fire intensity over several days to cure the clay walls….still gotta research this bit also.
This project is to challenge the Pizzas in Ubon as the best in the country and to make some bread and damper….hmmmmmm damper and honey….hmmmmmm or damper and corned beef and onion sangers….hmmmmmmmm