Cuchon du lait

[bickmeier]

I live in Baton Rouge and am planning an oven to completed by Saint Patrick's day.
At this time, I am leaning toward a teardrop french design with fairly heavy cladding. This will give me the oven depth to accommodate an entire pig and the door height to deal with a nice big rib roast. Bread and cooking come in second and pizzas have priority #3.

I will use fire bricks for the floor of the oven, but I want to use solid red clay bricks for the dome. There seems to be some debate on the red clay bricks, but i have seen ovens that are a hundred years of more old with intact red brick vaults and domes. Any informed opinions are welcome and solicited.

[Lburou]

Sounds interesting. Do you have some drawings you can post so we get the picture?

How tall do you think the oven door should be to accomodate a pig?

[DrakeRemoray]

The Alan Scott and Daniel Wing book "The Bread Builders" says clay bricks are ok for the dome. Most of us use firebricks becuase we are worried about the long term life of the oven, Clay bricks COULD potentially spall or crack after repeated heating and cooling cycles. But after how many? 100? 1,000? 10,000?

Even if you are adding extra mass, be sure to insulate all around the oven, including under the floor, and expect additional heat up time and fuel consumption.

How much bread do you expect to cook at once. I have 1" of extra mass on my pompeii dome and have cooked as much as 32 pounds of bread at once and could have baked more...

[Tscarborough]

Baton Rouge/Slidell red commons are fine for the oven. Just make sure they ARE solid commons.

[GianniFocaccia]

Drake,

Speaking of extra mass, two questions. Do you think your oven would handle 32lbs of bread without the extra 1" of mass? Without the extra mass do you think your oven could handle a second batch (maybe 20lbs and 20lbs)?

Thanks in advance,

John

[DrakeRemoray]

Not sure about without the extra mass John, but pretty sure I could do 40 lbs with no trouble.