For two days, at the recent Portland Home, Remodeling and Garden Show in Portland, Maine, I attempted to explain the workings and advantages of brick ovens. Granted, as a builder and baker myself, I am partial to the device. Yet, in the history of cooking, there has never been a device that has outperformed or been more durable than a brick oven.
Time and again, people told of memories from earlier in the their lives or of houses from the past where these ovens played a big role in making food.
Some points that came up often:
- It takes a laundry basket of hardwood to fire a 36" diameter oven to 700 degrees and without additional wood, the oven will be hot enough to cook many other meals for 3-4 days afterwards.
- The cost of a true brick oven is less than most cars we buy yet it will last a life time (or five) without repair costs.
- They can be built outdoors, indoors, or in moderated spaces such as three-season porches.
- True Brick Ovens travels to most places in the country to build these. We have a process and method that makes sense to do this.
- And lastly, brick ovens are social magnets. Owning and using one will change your social life as well as the quality of food you eat.
MAKE AMERICA BAKE AGAIN
Despite the inclement weather of the past two weeks, the brick oven I am building in the conservatory space at my own home is progressing.
More than 50 years ago my father bought me a gardening book that he found at the Newtown, Connecticut public library book sale. The book, "How to Make a Vegetable Garden'. by Edith Loring Fullerton was published in 1905 and the accumulated photos and information gathered before the turn of the century.
I have thumbed through this book hundreds of times since as it evokes what gardening was like, both the plant culture and the size and importance of gardens in those times. 
