Earthen Oven 飯舘村 8/29, 9/25

August 29 and September 25 helped with an earthen oven workshop led by Suzuki-san at Iitate Village (飯舘村) in Fukushima Prefecture.8/29

Build opening with firebricks

Form dome with wet sand

Earthen-sand mix

Cover with wet newspaper to separate sand from earth. Cover dome with earthen mix

Yoshi-kun and Kyle shaping oven

End of Day one

9/25

Cover thermal mass layer with an insulating layer of vermiculite, straw, and earth.

Hand-prints

Ideally, the earthen plaster slowly dries over several weeks to prevent drying cracks. Then, heat is slowly added to prevent expansion cracks. But we couldn’t wait.

Fire oven and bake pizzas

美味しいPizza

End of day two