Cob oven workshop

A busy Saturday here at Little City Farm leading a cob oven building workshop.  We fired up the oven, demonstrated raking and soaking it in preparation for baking, mixed up a batch of cob, formed cob around a mini oven dome (sand form), tested cob bricks, and (of course) baked fresh bread that was ready for eating just as the workshop wrapped up!  Our ongoing theme with these cob workshops is to demystify building and inspire people to have the confidence to build an oven for themselves.  Cob is an age-old building material that anyone can learn to work with, and cob ovens do not require a high level of building experience to turn out beautifully.  Cob ovens are made with simple tools and materials (clay, sand, straw) that are affordable and can be locally sourced, and really just need a generous amount of labour, love and experimentation to build and learn to bake with. Kiko Denzer's book, Build your own earth oven, is our favourite resource on cob oven building - and we recommend this as a must-have book for anyone thinking of making a cob oven.