Hey everybody!  Just poured my cladding on my WFO.  On the countdown to finishing this project!  Can't wait to fire it up!  My little brothers came out from So Cal. to help me put together the next phase of the oven.  They are in the top 10 competing in a competition sponsored by Dell to be America's Favorite Small Business.  Will you vote for them?  They are "Related Grey"!!  They have payed for most of my oven and helped me do all the hard labor part!  Couldn't have done my oven without their help.  So if my "Fresh Loaf Family" can help vote for them, they would greatly apppreciate it, and so would I!! :)  Thanks to you all!!

Faith

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Well, I poured my slab!  But didn't put in the insulation!  I have emailed the yahoo group for help too, but thought I might as well post it here and see what other help I can get! :)  I'm going for the Alan Smith vault style oven.  With all I'm reading, I should have put in the insulation before hand!  Ah...my help was here and I didn't get the book in time (the bread builders), and now "what's done is done".  But, can it be fixed?  With my rocks and cement and a fire brick on top I'm at 37 inches high.  Can I put some kind of insulation in the shape of my hearth floor, cover it with cement, and put the fire bricks on top of that?  I probably shouldn't go above 40 inches high.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!  I know it's messed up, don't yell at me too much! :)

Faith

I just finshed my blog entry about our trip to the US Virgin Islands. Nothing bread worthy happend during this week, but I still would like to share one picture:

The story behind this sugar plantations is not that great, here the Danish played the exploiters, but to have something like this in my backyard... well on a island like this dreaming is permitted!! BTW they still use this WFO.

Thomas

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We fired the oven today.  I made tortillas while the oven was heating, then pizza.  I still need to get the deck a little hotter.  But the pizzas were good.  I used Reinhart's Roman dough and the Neo-Neapolitan dough.  The I baked 3 kinds of bread.  I made Hamelma's Wheat bread with multigrain soaker.  I used different grain than he does.  Just want I had on hand.  Then I made a barley bread.  It is a spin off of Hamelman's Rustic bread.  The boules could use a little work on the scoring.  I know.  But it was 95 outside and I was trying to hurry loading all 6 loaves.  The last bread is BBA Sourdough Potato cheddar and chive bread.  We love that stuff.  The coloring on the potato bread is a little weak.  It was in the front of the oven.  I need to work on laoding so I can get more in the oven and in a better location.  But all in all I think it went well.  Thanks to all the other Woodies out there for their input and help along the way.

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