Work is currently under way at Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park to construct a new old-fashioned bread oven.
Previously, the fort at the park featured a wood-fired oven but it was in need of replacing, Historic Interpreter Chad Bogart said.
The new oven is being constructed in a traditional manner that settlers on the early frontier would have used, Bogart said.
“They have been making ovens like this for thousands of years,” he said.
The first step was to construct a shelter over where the outdoor oven would be located. The shelter was essential because the oven can be damaged by wet weather due to being constructed out of earthen materials. Bogart likened the oven’s construction to adobe huts.
“These were not designed to last a long time,” Bogart said. “One good downpour could ruin it.”
Bogart said the park is getting help on the project from Doug Ledbetter. A member of the park’s militia group, Ledbetter also owns the Gillispie Stone House in Limestone, a historic home built in the 1790s which he and his wife restored.
“He had built one of these on his property so he was already a good hand at it,” Bogart said.
Once the shelter was finished, work began on the oven itself. A concrete and stone base was built to hold the oven to give it proper stability.
On top of the base, a “sand form” was created using sand and stone to lay out the shape of the oven’s interior. Layers of wet newspaper were placed on top of the form to separate it from the clay that would form the walls of the oven.
Once the oven is completed, the rock and sand will be removed, leaving the interior hollow.
A thick layer of a clay was placed over the wet newspapers and allowed to reach a leather-hardened state. From there, Bogart said a mixture of clay, sand and straw — commonly called “cobb” during colonial times — was layered over the clay.
After the initial layer of cobb has dried some, another layer of cobb will be added, possibly on Friday, Bogart said.
Once all the cobbing is completed, the oven will sit idle for a time in order to properly dry out.
“You want it to be bone dry before you build a fire in this thing,” Bogart said. “We probably won’t light a fire in it until October.”
The fires will be small at first, gradually building up to cooking fire level.
The clay forming the oven walls will work with the fire bricks which make up the oven floor cooking surface will serve to create a convection heat to bake breads and other items in the oven. Historic re-enactors using the oven to bake will first build a fire in the front chamber which will be the baking area. This allows the oven to heat up. Once that fire ashes out, Bogart said, it will be swept out and the cooking surface cleaned. The cooking fire will then be built in the back, or fire, chamber to allow the convection heat to generate.
Temperatures in an outdoor oven such as this can reach around 1,000 degrees, Bogart said. Because of this, a lot of baking can be done with one lighting of the stove.
“In the 18th century, they would have baked one day a week,” Bogart said. “They would have made all of the bread, biscuits, pies and other baked goods they needed on that one day.
Early settlers would bake those items that required higher heat, such as loaves of bread, first and as the heat in the oven waned they would cook items requiring lower temperatures, Bogart said, adding settlers would even use the oven to dry herbs.
With the size of the oven being constructed, Bogart estimated it could hold four loaves of bread at a time.
“We’re anxious to try our 18th century recipes out,” he said.