Lovin' My Oven...Curing The Oven... Day one, 5-4-2012

 When you cure an oven what happens is you build a series of  low temperature fires. in this case,  over a period of five days. That is how long the process takes. If your fire is too hot without curing it properly the water that is still in the mortar will boil, and you could seriously damage the oven.
You can't use a heating element, you need to use wood. It is a wood fired oven after all.
The oven, once it has been constructed, still has a good quantity of water retained in the cement forms, anywhere from 5 to 15 gallons. Just letting it sit outside in the open won't do. This oven sat around for 3 weeks before we assembled it, then Geraldine and I took our trip to Paris for two weeks.  I'm assuming some of that 15 gallons of water evaporated,  but not all of it.
Three days back from gay Paris, myself, Brendan and Tom finished wrapping the 3 inches of fire blanket around the outside, laid the chicken wire on top of that, and applied the first coat of stucco. This was Tuesday May 1st, International Workers Holiday, and just in time for a nice little Occupy Oakland riot.
May 1st is also our dogs, Frida and Che's birthday.
The next day May second, we put the finishing coat of stucco on the oven.
The oven for all practical purposes was now complete, and in a few days time, once the stucco had a little time to set up, I would begin the process of curing the oven.  A dream of mine had been realized, and that's always a good feeling, to accomplish something you set out to do. I have been looking at ovens, on line, for about 8 years. The three of us stood around, and marveled at our work. Man, that's one cool oven.
Thursday it rained, and  the oven remained shrouded in black plastic. The next 5 days were going to be beautiful, with a big fat full moon, low tides on the coast, and nice temperatures.  In other words, perfect weather for curing the oven.
The the first day of curing instructions calls for a low grade fire of 300 degrees to be maintained for 24 hrs.
It was not hard to get it lit, and with the door to the oven completely open it heats up very quickly. Once I learned how to raise or lower the temperature using only the door of the oven as a ballast,  the oven would hold that temperature right there at 300. The position of the oven door also controls the quantity of smoke. Completely open very little smoke, almost shut, lots of smoke.
I was feeling so happy so I decided to have a beer around 5:00 PM, and then had some tokeless. I settled in for what I was thinking would be a long night out in the backyard. Well, that's why I remodeled the whole damn place.
Our backyard late at night, in the foothills of Oakland, especially when the fog is out to sea,  and the temperatures hover around 65 degrees, can be magical. You can barely hear the freeway noise, a scant two city blocks away, but you can hear the train whistle rumbling through downtown Oakland and Jack London Square. If people only knew just how cool the East Bay is.
With the smell of the juniper and pepper wood, the beers,  and the tokeless,  it was shaping up to be one of those cosmic magical nights.
I closed the door to the oven at about 8:30 PM, finished my last Sierra Nevada pale ale, and called it a day, a hell of a good one. I had spent the day tending the fire, playing a little guitar, and working on this blog.
I felt a little like some mythical Pagan figure , The Keeper of the Flame, or the Flame Master, Fire Starter, something stupid like that.  Maybe it was a combo of the ale and the weed, but five days of keeping a fire stoked is, none the less,  a long time.

Every once in a while that coastal breeze blows that train whistle up to the foothills from down at Jack London Square, and you know you're home baby.
Stay tuned on for more Lovin' My Oven entries.

Peace,

Make Food, Not War