A base for the horno is constructed of adobe bricks, bricks or stone. The outside of the base is plastered. The top of the base is paved with ladrillos (floor tiles).

The diameter of the horno interior is marked on the base top. A form is constructed to create the door opening and placed at the desired location on the base. The attached photos show construction using red fire bricks. To provide the additional thickness needed for the horno, two more layers were added on the outside of the fire bricks. The first layer consisted of adobe mud and broken ladrillos. The second layer was composed of adobe mud and broken tejas (roof tiles). The use of ladrillos for the construction of the horno walls would eliminate the need for the two additional layers of mud and broken tiles. Also, the wider ladrillos make it easier to shape the horno dome.

Horno Construction

The walls are laid up to a height that it is easy for the builder to reach inside and plaster the interior with adobe mud. This lower portion of the interior is plastered with adobe mud. A piece of plywood is cut to the diameter of the horno interior just below this point. The plywood is then cut in half. The two halves are placed against the interior wall and supported by bricks or wood blocks to support the construction of the dome. Sand is then placed on top of the plywood and mounded to the desired dome shape. Wet adobe mud is place on top of the sand. Bricks or ladrillos are laid to finish the top of the horno making sure they are placed in the adobe mud on top of the sand form. The adobe mud on the sand dome becomes the interior mud plaster, which reduces the labor of laying inside the oven spreading the mud plaster after the horno walls are finished. If bricks are used in the wall construction add the two additional layers of adobe mud and broken tiles mentioned above.

A vent hole must be placed in the back wall opposite the door. The hole is placed about a quarter of the way down from the top of the dome. The hole i...

Adobe Horno by Blake Bufford  

 

The most important thing you need to make a clay oven, called an horno, is adobe clay. I am lucky enough to live in an area with good adobe clay. There is a Spanish Mission built of the same material not 30 miles away.

I'm not an expert on soil, so I don't know how much clay has to be in your soil to make good bricks. You will have to experiment.

I was inspired to make an horno after seeing pictures of one in the "Bulletin of Primitive Technology", Fall, 1988, #16.

To begin, I broke up a 4' x 4' section of my backyard and soaked it with water. Then I agitated it with my feet until it was a thick liquid.

Next, straw (not hay) was added. I crumbled it with my hands and sifted it over the mud. I ran out of straw and gathered several large plastic bags of summer dried weeds (foxtail, oats, etc.). They worked just as well as the straw. I inspected several of the original adobe bricks and found they did not contain much straw, just mud. Perhaps the local clay is thick enough so that little is needed. I know Charlton Heston made brick without straw in the movie "The Ten Commandments", but I wasn't sure if the Lord would do the same for me, so I kept adding straw just to be safe. The amount depends on your soil. I noted that when the brick had an excessive amount of straw, it did not seem as solid when it dried. Again, this was a first attempt and the ratio of straw to clay is something you will have to experiment with.

 

 

I made a brick mold from 2 x 4s - 7" wide and 10 3/4" long. The interior dimensions make a brick 4" wide by 71/4" long by 3 1/2" tall.

When the clay is thoroughly mixed, sling it into the mold. The soil had lots of small rocks and I removed the largest ones before putting the clay in the mold.

When the clay is level with the top of the mold, take it to an open, sunny spot and slap it down onto the ground. This helps the clay to release from the sides of the mold. If it still sticks, some short, vigorous shakes should remove it. Sometimes I sprinkled ...

The
Olivas Adobe
Horno
  (Outdoor Baking Oven)
This beautiful new horno was constructed in the Olivas Adobe courtyard
by the Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers
Local Union No. 4.
The work was done as a community service project
for the union's apprentice program,
under the supervision of
Marcelo Crespi, Field Representative.
The apprentice craftsmen were
John Anderson, Sean Marshall, and Alfonso Morales.
We wish to thank Ron Bach Construction and Newton Building Materials
for the donation of materials and supplies.
§§§
Constructing the Oven

Laying the foundation

Building the oven base

For convenience of use, the base is built up to waist height

Cutting rebar to length

The reinforced concrete slab on which the oven
will rest is poured

Laying firebrick to form the oven

The delicate work


A final coat of plaster and the oven is complete

                            



                            

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Beehive Oven: how we did it, why we did it, what it was like.

Below are various photographs (my apologies if some of them are not horizontal---I haven't sorted that out yet). These pictures are of my crew as they built an excellent rendition of a beehive oven for use at an SCA event. I wanted the oven, partly as an experiment in period baking techniques, but also to provide the bread for an early Irish feast we were planning. As you can see, the oven was a smashing success. We used field stone from a local stone wall (indigenous stone to N.E. Pa, USA), which is relatively flat and somewhat uniformly shaped. It was thus easy to arrange the stone into shapes that would work well as our round oven. On advice from another 'oven expert', we used a 14" clay flower pot as the top half of the oven rather than stone. In retrospect, the stone corbelled nicely and we will probably use all stone next year. The photos below show the stages of the oven building process which, all in all, took about 3 hours to build. While some folks use a huge layer of clay or mud as insulation, this was not available to us. Instead we used the sod we cut from the fire pits. As an insulator it worked quite well so long as we ensured that the chinks were all filled in with dirt between the stone (dirt excavated from the fire pits and the oven floor). A large stone was found to use as a hearthstone, and this proved to be the perfect touch, ensuring our success. How to fire and use an earthen oven: Use kindling to start a small fire inside the oven. Chop firewood into slim, short pieces and use these to build a quick, hot fire. Keep this fire going fairly strong (fire shooting out the top hole (if you have one) is appropriate so long as you do not set the camp on fire! We pre-heated the oven for the length of time it took the bread to go through 2 risings on a chilly day ...

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How to build your own tandoor from a flower pot

A tandoor is a clay oven consisting of a vertical clay tube with sloping sides positioned over a hearth with an air inlet to one side. It produces a very intense heat which is usually used either to cook meat on long skewers or flatbreads on the vertical inside faces of the oven. In a British context we normally associate tandoors with Indian restaurants where commercial gas fired tandoors are often used to cook naan breads and tandoori meats and kebabs.

It is easy to buy a tandoor in the UK if you are prepared to pay for one of the restaurant ones. However, these are too expensive for someone who only wants to perform the ocasional bit of tandoori cookery so when I wanted a tandoor of my own an alternative solution had to be found. A possibility was to buy only the liner of a commercial tandoor and mount it in my own surround but this was considered to be too expensive. Instead I decided to use a 43cm(17") terracotta plant pot with its bottom cut off as my tandoor liner and mount it in a metal cylinder with vermiculite insulation. This page describes the construction of my tandoor in detail.
My first step was to locate a suitable outer cylinder. I settled on a scrap copper hot water cylinder because it was almost exactly the right width in which to mount my clay liner. I was able to cut the top off the cylinder with an electric nibbler, you could perform the same task but more slowly with a hand nibbler. I then had to remove all external pipes and water fittings, the pipes were simply sawn off with a hacksaw but the fittings had seized up rather well and needed some fairly hefty persuading to remove. I found that unexpectedly my cylinder contained a complicated piece of brasswork designed to circulate hot water from a central heating system, this simply came away when I finally managed to shift the heating element mount.
Once I had my empty cylinder with no top I put a shovel f...