Poseidon's Oven ---Part 4

This is the last part of the story of Poseidon’s oven. It is not enough to teach someone to build an outside oven; I just wanted to give an overview of a large project very dear to Pete’s heart. It would have been easier if I could have included many more photos, as the project was interesting. But I hope in some measure my readers have gained some unusual knowledge. The oven is a favourite part of our backyard now, and we’ve had some delicious meals, including a Christmas ham with all the trimmings, and several cakes.

The science of managing an outdoor oven includes learning about the fires. Where to place them inside the oven – at the sides – at the back – at the front?? Since our daughter was a dedicated Girl Guiide in her childhod, she considers herself an expert fire builder, and often arrives two to three hours early before one of our family parties especially for the purpose of lighting the fire. In the end she and Pete found that positioning the fire at the back was the best position for cooking. And a couple of hours needs to be set aside to get the heat of the oven up before the cooking starts.

It is a fascinating, ongoing journey, and we hope to have many more cooking adventures in the future.

Poseidon’s Oven Part 4

After the inside dome of the oven was finished, Pete and I took a trip to the brickyard where we were confronted by a confusing array of interesting colours and patterns. Who knew bricks could be so exciting!?

Having made our choice, Pete placed the order. We had two days before the bricks were delivered so we returned home for Pete to finish the cladding over the top of the dome. To allow the firebricks in the dome to expand and contract as needed by the fluctuating heat, he placed tinfoil sheeting over the dome. Steel reinforcing bars added strength when he filled the space over the top with a mixture of concrete and vermiculite. I could see the oven was going to be well insulated.

Pete and I had chosen pale cream bricks to build the outside walls, with a few red ones for contrasting stripes, but just at this time a good friend, needing somewhere to dispose of a small number of leftover bricks, insisted we take them for our project. They were the colour of terracotta, and we decided they would make an appropriate base. You can probably see the bottom three rows of donated bricks in the picture.

Despite the amount of work involved in building the oven, Pete found time to take many pictures of his progress. Little treasures, including two tiny metal cars, a miniature plastic dog and a glass marble, were found on the site too, and he found it extremely difficult to part with them! 

"These belonged to some little child – how can we throw them away?" he said.

The bricks were to form an outside skin over the whole oven. Pete is a perfectionist, and he spent endless time measuring and marking the track on the slab for the first row of bricks. If they were wrong – all the bricks would be wrong.

Each day his last job was to lay the corner bricks for the next day. Allowing them overnight to dry, meant that he could attach a string line to them the next morning and then lay the rest of the line. He continued in this way as the oven skin took shape. Each day he found the time to lay about two rows of bricks which meant that the skin took just a few weeks.

In all, before he was finished he had built six brick arches, using five different templates. On the slab base at the back of the oven there is an arch over a fire-wood storage area, and at the front there is a lower arch as well as the two entrance archways in front of the dome.

At first when the cement dome was built, I thought it looked like a small mosque, but as the brickwork grew and took shape, I thought it resembled a marvellous cathedral!

I decided that we had to have a mask to decorate our oven, and Pete agreed. My research into Greek Gods rewarded me with the story of Hestia, a virgin goddess of the hearth, and of architecture, and the right ordering of domesticity, the family and the State. She sounded quite appropriate to watch over our oven. Now, where to get a mask of a Greek Goddess??

Hanging on our side fence were two masks I moulded years before during a hand building pottery class. There was the handsome, bearded Poseidon, keeping company with the poor unfortunate, (I made her mouth too big,) Nefertiti.

Not only a mask was considered, but I decided Pete should insert a rooster weather vane on top of the chimney.

“How am I to do that??”

“Aah – you’ll think of something.”

Unfortunately, by the time the oven was finished, we still hadn’t found our Hestia. The rooster weatherv-vanes we found on the Internet didn’t look as if they would last five minutes out in the weather, let alone five years, and the ones that did were very expensive. We haven’t abandoned the idea – it just hasn’t come to fruition yet.

As time went on, Poseidon, the only decent mask on the fence, was looking more and more like a possible candidate for the job.

The oven had been a big project. Pete and I were both mentally exhausted, and Pete was physically exhausted as well. 

When the outside walls were completed, I heard Pete cutting timber, and found he was building a structure to hold up the roof. He’d bought flat glazed roof tiles, and sections of ridge capping from the Brickyard. When it was finished, the roof was a lovely burnished brown.

Now the time came for the last little job – the chimney. Rado’s chimney had a European influence, with triangular pieces of cut brick around the top, and half circles of terracotta drain pipe across the top. Pete was doubtful about cutting so many pieces of brick, and I suggested he use his own design. The chimney he built looked great.

Our Greek Goddess, Hestia, still hadn’t materialised, and Poseidon was looking more and more attractive. We took him down and cleaned the cobwebs from his beard.

I'm sure he's started smiling since his elevation to supervisor of the oven.

THE END

(tomorrow I'll post a photo of the oven – just haven't got time today)