Build your own oven

Left: Oven base with sand form

Right: building oven walls.
I have been in Masindi for a year and a half now, but I didn't have an oven. When I first moved in, I had a kitchen counter built and brought a refrigerator up from Kampala. The fridge has been of limited use, as over the last month for about 3 1/2 weeks power wasn't strong enough to run it. It is great when it is working; a coke with ice is a real comfort food for me! I moved a sink and put in a soak pit for drainage -- no sewer lines here. I have a two burner propane stove (with an unfortunate and unsafe tendency for the gas pipe to drop out of the bottom). I have felt limited in cooking. I have learned about cooking with a local charcoal stove. I have experimented with a "dutch oven" pan. I have made a makeshift pan-in-pan; it does cakes but is limited in size and won't make a good roast chicken or baguette. The pan-in-pan oven is two large pans on top of each other with the top pan inverted to form the oven walls, and you place a separate smaller cooking pan inside plus put charcoal above and below the larger pans--an elaboration on a dutch oven. I've used a solar oven for some cooking also. I just wasn't satisfied. I really missed good breads, roast chicken and other oven baked foods, so I decided to build an outdoor wood-fired oven. With the help of my security guard, I built this monster oven. We made a cylindrical base (figuring this would support the load best due to the round shape of the oven) from local mud bricks and cement. I got a lot of help from an online forum-- www.fornobravo.com/forum is a great resource for info on wood ovens and they have lots of great people online willing to help you.

After building a base, I put down a layer of adobe for insulation--regular cement doesn't like hot oven temperatures. We built the oven floor from bricks and clay then made a form of wet sand (a big sandcastle) for the shaping the oven. We mortared local bricks with termite mud mixed with sand to build the oven walls and doorway. Then covered the oven in a layer of adobe for insulation.

I had a series of firings to dry the oven, and believe it or not, the oven works great! You push the fire to the side of the oven to cook things like pizzas and flat breads. Let the oven cool a bit and you have baguettes of french bread, cornmeal muffins, roast chicken, pork ribs etc. You can even close up the oven with a door and cook on the retained heat. I've had two pizza parties for expatriates here and have been told I have "the best pizza in Uganda." There is some pizza here, mostly in the capital--some of my Ugandan friends have heard of pizza though few have tasted it until now.

The oven build has drawn a great deal of interest as none of the locals have seen anything like it--guesses on it ran from water tank to doghouse, with some people thinking it was just an anthill. When they see fire coming from it the really wonder! I often have people coming by to see the oven, and currently have at least two people organizing groups to come to my house for cooking lessons. Along with cooking demonstrations, I teach the basics of nutrition, and sometime even some agriculture on how to grow vegetables like carrots (for Vitamin A). So, even though I really built the oven due to my desire for baked goods, it is finding a place in my health ministry.