Hope's Mud Oven
10 April 2011
Hope Merkle had a passion for and wanted to teach her community to learn to cook and bake fresh food from the garden. It was Jordan Hosea, his business partner Meleah, and a whole bunch of workshop volunteers who showed up at Los Osos Valley Nursery the last three weekends of March who would bring her dream to fruition.
First, an area in one of the display gardens was prepped. A platform for the oven was built using adobe mud and dirt-filled sacks, which were stacked up to the proper height. Then, in the center round platform where the oven was to be placed, bricks were laid to serve as the floor of the oven and a channel was cut out of the platform where the door was to go. The channel cut later had a stone extension (or more bricks) put into place.
The oven is heated by lighting a wood fire on the brick floor of the oven, and when the oven has reached it proper temperature those hot coals can be scraped out of that channel or lip into a bucket. The floor of the oven can be quickly swept clean and the breads and food placed into the now hot oven.
Once the bricks were in place, a pile of wet sand was mounded up, patted, and sculpted into a round ball. While that process was going on, other volunteers were busy slapping their feet in the Mississippi mud – the rich dark adobe dirt that served as the basis of the oven and then patted into “potatoes” of clay that were laid around the sand ball and pinched together.
The clay-covered dome was cut to form a doorway, and when the clay was dried hard enough to support itself (sort of like Roman arches) the sand was scooped out and the next thick layer of clay mixed with straw was placed over the dome. The oven wall ended up about a foot thick. Finished with more clay sculpted all around, a bear was formed; the oven is the bear’s round belly.
The amazing thing about the oven is that it’s a living, breathing, sustainable convection oven; the round shaped circular interior is perfectly designed to circulate heat. The interior heats up to 900 degrees so food can be cooked very, very quickly; and because the insulation is so thick, it holds heat for a long time so you can cook your meals for days while only using only one fire. The mud oven is quite an amazing piece of engineering that’s been in use for thousands of years.
Check out the mud oven or find out more from Hope at 805-528-5300
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