Blocks and mortar

The next step was to fit the blocks nicely and mortar them into place. For this we got Dave our neighbour downstairs to come and help. He is a builder and can do this kind of thing standing on his head. Ok, I've never actually seen that but I bet he could. I'd like to see it, for sure. I'm definitely going to think up a situation that would require upside-down brick laying.

So anyway, Dave pitched up back of nine with a load of sand and cement. First he built the outer walls and we mocked up the fireplace:

 

Next he set the fireplace and the combustion chamber floor:

All that stuff under the block is loose fill vermiculite insulation. After that was done we had lunch. After lunch we built up the front and the riser sleeve:

And that was all the blockwork done. Eight hours on the nail. I think I could have spent a week doing it by myself, easily, and it still wouldn't have been straight or level.

The Genie of the Oven

Having recognized my lack of experience in blockwork, I got my pal and neighbour Dave to come and spend a day working on it. Dave, being a builder, has plenty of experience with block and he sure did earn his money.

First though, the floor needed to be ready to receive the block. This meant a stabilizing sheet of ply and lots of screws, and several sheets of vermiculite board. You can use loose fill vermiculite for all kinds of things and it is very cheap. Vermiculite board is quite a bit more expensive but it has good compression strength, a rated operating temperature of 900 degrees celcius and provides excellent insulation. Guy and I spent half a day measuring, cutting, screwing down and figuring out how to get the vermiculite board to cover the required area without wasting too much of it. In the end it looked like this:

The last bits to go in were those two small dark triangles. The ones that look like the eyes, under a massive turban. As soon as I fitted them Guy said "Oh, it's a computer-generated genie."

It makes me irrationally happy to think of him down there, insulating the floor and keeping us safe from bakery fires.

Laying it out

So the first thing was to lay all the blocks out dry, just to get an idea of how they would go together. I had several goes, and this was the prettiest:

Aerated concrete is pretty amazing stuff. It has a structure like an Aero chocolate bar, lots of tiny holes. This means that those blocks are incredibly light, and have quite respectable insulating qualities. You can also cut them with an ordinary hand saw; you can see some of the various sizes I produced in the picture.

Actually, useful though that is, I soon discovered that it was a potential problem. Every time I started on a new course, I realized that there were at least five ways to go about it and that I lacked the experience to decide how it should best be done. There was a real possibility that in finding out, I was going to reduce my entire supply of block to dust and miscellania.  It was time to get some help.

The Steamie rocket oven: a quick intro

Three weeks ago it was my intention to blog our progress if not daily, then at least three or four times a week. But I'm not a natural blogger, and somehow 'blog entry' so often gets bumped onto tomorrow's todo list.

We're now halfway through our projected refitting time. I think we're still on track. It may be a bit of a scramble at the end, but then these things do always seem to be. In the meantime, I've revised my blogging intentions: I will try to write short, pithy posts in the hope that I will actually get around to writing them. Here's the first.

The basic scheme of our oven is to have three baking chambers ('decks', in baker-speak) heated by an efficient wood burner. Each deck is a kind of box-within-a-box, so that the burner can vent between the inner and outer skins. The outer skin is insulated so that most of the heat goes into heating the inner baking space. Here's a cutaway section:

The fire happens down around my shins (the fire doors are open in the picture, but close during use), and burns sideways along the horizontal combustion chamber. The hot gases then head up the internal chimney ('riser sleeve') to the bottom of the first deck. The gap between the inner and outer skins of the decks is pretty narrow (30mm) to transfer as much heat as possible.

We have finished all of the blockwork and screeded the hot faces We are now waiting for the screed to go off and for the steel decks to arrive from the blacksmith. 'We', I should add, currently means myself, Zillah, Dave (our neighbour, and boss of the building work - more of him later) and Zillah's brother, Guy. Guy is an architect, carpenter, CAD wizard and all round jolly good chap. He did the drawing above (as well as very many others) and has done a fantastic job coordinating materials. If you need anything at all doing to your house or any other building, he's your man.

Next: setting up the blocks.

Building starts this week

This week sees the start of building the new oven.

The bakery has been dismantled and packed up. Tins, baskets, scales, bowls, brushes and linen all put into storage for the next six weeks. Even the oven must go into storage. We hope it will be in use before long for demonstration events.


The building materials are arriving - the standard brick and block type stuff yesterday and the specialist fire resistant and heat proof things today.



The moment the delivery crane loomed over the back wall, threatening to put down a load of block on my perennial fruit and vegetable garden was an interesting one, but it was landed safely on the path between the plants and the washing line.


Over the next six weeks this unpromising looking space will be transformed into a fuel and space-efficient wood fired oven.

Cardamom Love

There's been quite a bit of enthusiasm for cardamom amongst Bread Clubbers after the success of the Christmas Julekage, so I thought I'd share one of my favourite savoury recipes using cardamom.

Cardamom (Elletaria cardamomum) originated in India, but has been used in Europe and the Middle East for centuries - for flavouring coffee in Egypt, in sweet baking in Scandinavia, Germany and Eastern Europe. In India it's used for sweet dishes, but also in curry mixes such as garam masala. I love to use it with rice, it gives a wonderful gentle spicy aroma that seems to sit well with many Indian or Middle Eastern recipes. The seed contains volatile oils, so it's particularly worthwhile buying pods of cardamom and grinding the seeds yourself. (To get the seeds out of the pods I just squash to pod under the bottom of their jar until the pod cracks, and it's then easy to get at the seeds).

Here's my recipe for Cardamom Rice

Ingredients

1 tablespoon each of oil and butter
1 smallish onion, chopped finely
3 cardamom pods
About a tablespoon of spice seeds, according to what the rice is to accompany, I often use cumin, fennel, fenugreek and mustard if I'm making curry.
500g brown rice
1 litre of water or chicken stock (or a mixture or the two)
1 teaspoon of salt.

Heat the oil and butter in a heavy saucepan. I find the best thing for the job is an earthenware pan with a lid, which can go on the hob, but something like a Le Creuset would work OK too.

Put in the chopped onion and sweat over a gentle heat until the onion is translucent.

While the onion is cooking, rinse the rice under running water.

Add the spices to the onions, stir for a few minutes, then add the rice and turn the heat up to medium. Keep stirring to coat the rice grains in the oil and butter.

Pour in the stock and/or water and bring to the boil. The boil it fairly hard for 10 minutes.

Put the lid on the pan and turn down the heat as low as it will go. Use a heat diffuser, if you have one. Now just let it cook very gently for about an hour and a half. Don't take the lid off or stir it (unless you think it's going to burn on the bottom, in which case, add a little more boiling water).

Turn off the heat and, without taking the lid off, let it sit for 20 minutes or so more. Finally, take off the lid and give the rice a fluff with a fork. The grains should be nice and soft and puffed up, and not a bit tough, as brown rice can sometimes be.

Great with chickpea curry, green veg and yoghurt.

happy happy

Isn't it cool how you can stop thinking about something for a while, but the brain just carries on chewing it over without bothering you about it? I noticed this when I was an undergraduate; essays would come out better if, having done a pile of reading, I played the violin for a week before I started writing.

Before Christmas I was trying to tie down a load of different things in the bakery, and never quite got them all working at once. Over Christmas, it was really good to take a step back, see the bigger picture, and concentrate on drinking and stuffing my face. Today, back in the bakery, it seemed as though all those things had just shaken down and fallen into place. Seven oven loads were mixed, folded, scaled, moulded, proved and baked, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, straight through, without a hitch. Every one ready when it was time to go into the oven, not a watt of electricity wasted. Mixer cleaned, tubs rinsed, tins wiped, leaven made and flour weighed out for tomorrow. Home for supper and putting the girls to bed. Another time I'll write about why I think everything worked so well; this evening I just wanted to note that I am a very happy baker today.