Go on a course: build an oven, bake some bread

Chef Gideon Hitchin built a wood-fired oven in the grounds of Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage in Dorset. Now he leads the Build and Bake course, which teaches you how to create your own oven and bake delicious loaves of bread with that distinctive wood-fired taste.

The oven is a basic construction - a dome of clay with a chimney built on a bed of bricks. Wood is lit in the dome to heat it to very high temperatures, and then removed - the food is cooked by the residual heat.

Our day began in a nearby stream to collect the clay. This had to be combined with sand to create the right consistency. But there were no cement mixers at River Cottage; instead we used our feet to stomp and squish everything together.

Next, we built a big sand mould on top of a base of London bricks and slapped the clay mixture over it to form the dome. It needed a while to dry before we could scrape out the sand and light a fire to harden the clay, so we headed into the warmth of the barn for a lesson in bread making.

After a hearty lunch, we went back outside to see if our oven was ready to be fired solid. Unfortunately, it seemed the particularly cold day (or our engineering skills) had caused the oven to collapse.

All was not lost as, in true Blue Peter style, Gideon had ‘one he made earlier', and we put in our loaves for baking.

I don't know whether it was the aroma of the freshly baked bread sat next to me, but all I could think about on the way home was where I was going to build my oven ready for a summer of outdoor eating.

For more information on the Build and Bake course, call 01297 630302 or visit www.rivercottage.net. 

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