Double
Skinned Oven
Using a home made metal box.
to bake bread, roast meat etc.
"This page contains plans and
designs to enable you to make a more complex super efficient outdoor or indoor
oven suitable for baking bread, pastries and meats.


The Double Skinned Oven
This oven is manufactured from some
bricks, cement, angle iron, sheet metal and some pop rivets and nuts & bolts.
The oven was designed to be used out-doors and will provide baking facilities
for a large family or small community's daily needs.
The brick structure is straightforward and incorporates a metal fire grill of a
type that will allow ashes to fall, or be raked through into the ash pit,
allowing the oven to be kept lit 24 hours a day if necessary. Expanded steel
decking would be best for the metal grill.
The chimney can be made from regular stove pipe if available, but, in an
emergency, used tin cans can be opened at both ends, snipped at one end to
reduce the diameter, and forced inside each other to act as a chimney. Be aware
that the tin can chimney method will burn out much quicker than with regular
stove pipe.
Principles of use
Most simple single skin ovens will
cause the items being baked to burn on the bottom if using a fire beneath. This
design avoids this and allows a large degree of temperature control through the
use of a double (convection) skin and vents.
The inner skin (the oven itself) is completely enclosed, so neither smoke nor
direct heat damages the food. The outer skin has holes in the base for heat to
enter. It is then channelled around and up, trapped between inner and outer
walls. A vent on the roof of the outer wall allows the heat to escape, or not.
The more open the vent is, the cooler the oven. The more closed it it, the less
heat escapes, and the hotter the oven. The oven has been thoroughly tested, and
it has been found that with the vent open, and a small fire beneath, the oven
(with a dish of water in the bottom) can also serve as a bread prover.
A vent on the door of the oven can give additional temperature control, but
shouldn't really be necessary.
Of course the oven need not necessarily be used on bricks. It has been loaded
onto the back of a pick-up and used at camp over a trench fire.
The oven can be made any size. The best way of increasing the size is to
lengthen it. That way, if used over a trench fire, the trench just needs to be
lengthened.
Estimate at the outset, the size you think you will need and adjust the
dimensions accordingly.