The kids and I had fun building our bread oven in a day. It was a little easier for us because we had all of the cob-making materials and pits on hand. I also took the easy way out and used cinder blocks for the base. That's what we had on hand, and they seem to be working just fine.

The process was to first pour about 8 5-gallon buckets of sand in the area that I wanted to build the oven and level it. Then we laid the cinder blocks, leveling them as we went. Then we built up an egg-shaped mound of wet sand, again using about another 8 buckets of sand. We used bricks to help contain the sand while we built it up.





When we liked the shape and size of the sand mound, we covered it with wet newspaper.




Over that, we put a layer of sand/clay cob a few inches thick, and then another layer of my regular cob mix, another 2-3 inches thick.




Then we allowed that to dry for 4 or 5 days. The weather was cool and damp.

Next, we cut out the door and made a fire. We cooked bread in the oven, and the next day made pizza. It was good, but a little sandy and gritty. Then we learned to mop out the ashes with a wet mop (improvised with a big rag on a stick). We have cooked in the oven several times since.



We also decided to add more layers to the oven so that it would hold the heat longer. We added about 4 inches of clay/sawdust, and then covered that with another layer of plaster cob.

When I've done it right, the bread and pizza have been far and away the BEST I've ever had, but I've had a few flops in figuring out the best method/temp. One thing that I've noticed is that the bread keeps much better than my regular oven baked bread.