Bread in cob oven

Spent all of this past weekend outside - the weather was amazing - upto 21 C on on day, and sunny! Bare toes were out, sweaters off, sunhats on...

We seeded onion sets, carrots, swiss chard, radish, cilantro, fava beans, snow peas into the garden beds after they were prepped with compost and cleared of last year's mulch. We weeded the cold frames, picked arugula, chives and greens for a fresh salad, and ate our lunch outdoors on the patio. In the greenhouse we continued with transplanting, having completed the hundreds of tomatoes, and now moving on to kale, broccoli, peppers, basil, and other herbs. We also planted seeds of zucchini, squash, pumpkin and cucumbers in flats, which will be ready in time for the May seedling sale. Busy, exciting time of the year. We are grateful for longer days...the sun is now rising around 6:30 am and setting after 7 pm and we still have about two months of longer days to come.

While we were gardening we decided to fire up the cob oven - I had made up several batches of bread dough earlier in the morning, and it was on it's first rising. If a good fire is made during this time, letting it burn large and hot during the two bread rising stages, it gives just enough length of heat to bake a large batch of bread and some cookies, and doesn't make for too long a day tending fire. After only about 20 minutes of actual baking time we came out with 6 tasty loaves of bread - cornmeal, caraway rye, oatmeal sunflower, flax & sesame, ready just in time for making sandwiches with the fresh greens for our lunch break. Mmm....