How to Build an Earth Oven

If you decide to build an earth oven, you will be amazed at how delicious your homemade pizza and bread will taste. Earth ovens are great for cooking meats, fish, poultry, vegetables and even some desserts.

Things You'll Need

• Shovel
• Wheelbarrow
• Pails
• Tape measure
• Lumber scraps
• Sand
• Bricks
• Spoon or rock
• Water
• Plastic tarp
• Clay soil (approximately 25 to 40 pounds)
• Wet newspaper
• Sharp knife or saw

Instructions

Preparing the Base

1. Decide on the location and height of your earth oven. Many people build their earth ovens so that the floor is waist high and others choose to put the floor of their ovens at ground level.

2. Determine the size of the square earth oven you need. Generally, an oven floor that measures 22 to 27 inches is adequate.

3. Make a level bed of sand where you're going to build your oven and slightly tamp down the sand.

4. Use standard red bricks to form the oven floor, and place the first brick on the sand and make sure it's level and solid.

5. Place the rest of the bricks side by side and gently tap down any brick that's not level with the rest.

Build the Form

1. Cover your brick floor with wet sand and shape it into a square form that you'll later cover with mud and remove after the mud is dry.

2. Build your wet sand form several inches higher than half of the width of the oven floor. For example, if an oven floor measures 26 inches, the wet sand form should stand approximately 16 to 18 inches high.

3. Level all four sides of the wet sand form.

4. Calculate the inside area of your oven. Measure the distance from the top of the wet sand form to the floor and multiply that number by 63 percent. You'll need this number to make the right-size over-door.

Make the Mud

1. Mix your mud, made from clay soil and water, until the texture of the mix is slightly wet but workable. It is easiest to mix your mud on a tarp.

2. Get a helper to hold two corners of the tarp while you hold the other corners and roll the tarp different directions to mix the mud. The purpose is to break the clay into small pieces and mix it with sand.

3. Make a hard mud ball, and drop it from chest high to test your mud mixture. It shouldn't break when it hits the ground, and if it does, just add more water or sand and clay mixture as needed; if your mud is too moist, give it more drying time.

Building the Oven

1. Cover the sand form with sheets of wet newspaper and smooth them until they are flat. The newspaper prevents mud from sticking to your sand form.

2. Apply the mud mixture over the wet newspaper in a layer that measures 3 to 4 inches in thickness. Use your hand's width as a measuring gauge.

3. Angle the mud mixture top inward as you build it upwards, and keep the sides neat, clean and squared. Make sure to press the mud into itself and not into the sand form.

4. Pack the mud with a flat board solidly against the sand form. Add several more layers of mud, but make sure each layer is dry before you add the next one.

Finishing the Oven

1. Scratch the doorway line into the mud. Remember to make the doorway height 63% of your interior oven size (see section 2). The width of the oven door should measure 1/3 to 1/2 of the oven's inside diameter.

2. Make a fist-sized tunnel into the bottom of the sand form. Use a sharp knife or small saw to cut out and remove the sand from the inside of your earth oven.

3. Carve out the rest of the door opening and finish removing any sand from the inside.

4. Rub the doorway until it is smooth and even using a piece of wood, a spoon or stone.

Tips & Warnings

• After the last layer of mud has dried, apply an optional fine plaster layer to your earth oven.

• Don't remove the sand if any mud sticks to the board while you're packing it. That means it needs more drying time.

• The mud walls must be completely dry and be leather hard before you remove the sand form.

Resources

• Go here for more information on earth ovens.