Earth Oven Class

Today was all about cooking. We started off by mixing ingredients for bread or pizza dough, as explained by the fabulous folks at Mother Earth News. I have a PDF that I sent home with families that I will try to post here as soon as possible.

recipe and ingredients

Lily mixing up dough

ready to rise

 After that, everyone got down to bidness with constructing an earth oven. Mark had put together the plinth yesterday so that  the kids could see some results as soon as possible. He had followed the suggestions over at The Clay Oven to get us started and Brook provided guidance and picked up the fire bricks for us.

Plinth with 2 fire bricks

First the kids built the sand mound that would form the inside of the oven.

From there, we organized the kids into a chain so that the clay they had mixed could make it quickly and efficiently over to the oven location where Brook and Mark were forming the first layer of cobb.

Mixing up the cobb is messy work

Notice the wet newspaper over the top of the sand

After the first layer of cobb was applied, the kids headed in for lunch.

Lunch with this group is always fun. The kids wander around begging scraps (regardless of what awesomeness is provided for them) and play becomes a  part of eating. This half 30-60 minutes is sometimes my favorite of the day, with parents chatting, food being shared and the spirit of play all over the place. It's lovely.

After lunch, some kids worked on the second layer of cobb while other participated in a pizza garden planting project. The girls and I had cut up egg crates earlier in the day so each child could have six spots in which to poke a seed.

We planted things you would find on a pizza, in keeping with our earth oven theme. Basil, tomatoes, bell peppers, parsley, and chives all got poked into place by small fingers, a gift they would all take home.

After that, more work and play and then pick-up.

Finishing up the second layer of cobb

waiting for slip and decoration

Brilliant class. We couldn't be happier with the results!

And, of course, special thanks go out to all the parent helpers today (a record, I think), with Beth, Heidi, Brook, Joan and Julie all learning about earth ovens.