new commercial oven at CSA farm

Here’s a new commercial oven at Gathering Together Farm, a small farm/CSA restaurant in Philomath, Oregon, with cooks JC and Lisa posing with tools. This is a super-insulated design, with an external basket frame covered w/clay-slip-soaked burlap and insulating (sawdust-clay) plaster. When dry, the open cavity was filled w/loose perlite for insulation. The thermal layer is the standard clay/sand mix, covered with a cardboard expansion gap/thermal break (see the oven-fuel-firing-times-and-insulation post), and a layer of sawdust-clay insulation. Then about a 6″ space, and the final covered frame. The base is a stout metal box. Less well insulated ovens are typically barely warm on the outside after hours of firing, so I’m expecting this one to hold its heat really well. But so far it’s only had drying and test fires, and doesn’t even have a baking door! Mason Trevor Norland is going to fashion stone feet and skin for the lower portion of the base.