Todays Project

 Todays project was baking bread outside with wood.  Ideally, it would be in a brick oven.  Since I'm never going to be able to buy the brick and mortar I need to build one, I decided to think outside the box.  This probably wont bake me a good pizza, but it did the tasty buns bread just fine.  The bread didn't rise quite like it does in the house oven but it also didnt get the benefit of the oven pre-heating with them inside.  The grill is one of those smoker charcoal grills and I just built my fire on the smoker end with wood.  When the rolls were done, the taters in the foil were close to ready so I threw some meat on the grill, cooked it and had a nice supper with it outside, in the shade.

 Grizzly waiting for a piece of bread.

 Jake making sure there was no juice left in the bag that might make the garbage can nasty.

Sonya waiting for left overs.

Cooking without modern conveniences

Before anyone gets all excited, that is NOT my oven. I do have the complete plans for it and have more than half my blocks accumulated already. I got the plans free from FornoBravo's website. In the spring I will pour my concrete pad and get to work building it so I won't have to cook in the house and rely on electric or gas anymore.

I am pretty familiar with outdoor cooking, I almost never cook in the house during the spring/summer/fall. As long as it's not raining, I'm cooking outside with my cast iron. It's a skill I most strongly recommend everyone should learn. Hand in hand with cooking outdoors is the skill of starting a fire quickly without using starter fluids, etc. We all need to learn these skills just in case. With a little effort and patience, one can learn to easily control temperatures for specific cooking needs.

Along with the traditional bread oven, I will be building a wood fired grill/cook range. The design is solid in my mind and I have worked out a floor plan on paper for it that appears like it will work out well.

So, while we're all prepping( we ARE all prepping right?) consider how you'll cook all that food you've stocked up if the power fails. A ready to go outdoor cook pit is a good idea! Don't forget pots and pans, cast iron is the way to go. Not all indoor pots and pans will work well for wood fired cooking. Also remember your camp fire coffee pot!