We have a wood burning stove in the kitchen, which I use almost every day during winter. Oven in it is quite small and does not bake evenly, so I have not used it much for baking. Now I realized that it is perfect for baking bread in a pot or crock. I started making no-knead breads again and bake them in a shallow earthenware pot. Crust on this bread is perfectly crunchy and we usually eat the whole bread while it is still warm. I purchased a sour dough starter and have now kept it going for three bake cycles. That sour dough made the bread even better. So far I have used ready made organic multigrain flour mixture and added some regular wheat flour to it, but should start experimenting with spelt and other type whole grain flour, If I have time to go to the farmer's market where they sell those.

Sari

Wow does that look good!

I just love this type of bread. Even better to make it in the woodstove - I don't think I've seen any 'modern' woodstove with an oven. My grandmother baked all the bread for a family of ten children in her woodstove, so that one had quite a large oven and that is how they were designed at the time.

That looks great, @svalli! You've found your calling! (Besides gardening, that is). It's easy to get addicted to homemade bread. Rye is still my favorite, though I have tried just about every kind of flour I could make. Have fun experimenting with them!

My daughter made a sourdough loaf this morning. She got her starter from a friend. I guess the sourdough starter is quite old, four years and counting. She’s bringing us half of the loaf to go with our beef & vegetable soup tonight. But, her’s was made in a dutch oven inside a conventional oven. The wood stove cooked version sounds even better.

If I ever get a cabin in the woods or a dacha or something like that, they’ll have to be a cast iron stove with a built in oven. Seems like an immensely appealing way to cook.

ohhhh nice to see people luv baking bread as much as I do I love the classic dutch oven breads I finally have my own sour dough starter and I love it..

bower wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 7:34 am I just love this type of bread. Even better to make it in the wood stove - I don't think I've seen any 'modern' wood stove with an oven. My grandmother baked all the bread for a family of ten children in her wood stove, so that one had quite a large oven and that is how they were designed at the time.

Our house was built 1988 and wood stoves were not commonly put into city houses in those years, so I am glad that the builder was thinking ahead and had the stove installed. Our main heating source is electric, but now with the high cost of electricity and being self sufficient with firewood we can keep the house warm with two fireplaces and the stove.

Both of my grandmothers used to cook with wood stoves, which were all around cast iron and had also ovens in them, but bread was baked in a separate brick oven which was on the brick work behind the stove. Brick ovens have more even heat and are better for baking. Some modern fireplaces here have now similar ovens, which people use like slow cookers to make roasts overnight.

Being over 30 years old our wood stove is not manufactured anymore and spare parts are not easy to find, if we would need any. To my eyes the stove looks a bit too plain compared to some newer models, which have more old fashioned look.

As you can see, I do collect cast iron pots and pans. That is just small part of my collection

I knew a ton of people that had wood burning stoves when I grew up.
Looks fantastic.

Wow... that is a really nice looking woodstove @svalli . I suppose the firebox is in the lower drawer?? Or is it fed from the top?
Our people didn't have brick I guess, or anything as sophisticated as the old country would have. My grandmother's stove was a freestanding appliance, all iron, and no counters or any table or anything would be allowed to touch that or it could catch fire. The woodstove was the heart of our homes and heated the entire house as well as providing all the cooking capacity. Those standard ways started to change around 1949 when we joined Canada, but of course the fine wood stoves did linger on much longer. I remember my grandmother's stove from the 1960's or 70's in their retirement home, which would've been similar to the ones they had used all their lives.
That stove had a round piece on the front burner which you lift off with an iron handle that was made for the purpose, to feed small sticks into the fire. That front burner was the hottest of course!!
I read about designs for putting an oven in brick chimneys when I was building my house back in the 90's. Some great ideas. It makes perfect sense to use the heat from your chimney to bake or cook. I didn't manage to incorporate that, unfortunately, and ended with a wood furnace that didn't have any cooking capability either. Very nice that your builders didn't have to compromise and included those important features for backup, where energy supply is tenuous. I would never give up my wood furnace, although I now have an electric furnace in use, because for severe conditions and outages it is very important to have a backup plan.

bower wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 5:54 pm I suppose the firebox is in the lower drawer?? Or is it fed from the top?

Top small door is where the firebox is and below it is where the ashes fall into a container. That small rectangular thing slides to control the airflow through the fire grate. Both wider doors have oven spaces in them. Lower one does not get as hot as the top and is also smaller, but it retains heat better due to thicker walls of it. Rectangular piece on the right side is a lever to control heat circulation inside the stove and is turned if the ovens are also heated. There is a thermometer on the top part, but it is located too high to show the oven temperature accurately, so I usually put a grill thermometer's probe in the oven to measure the temperature. That stove may be designed in 1960's or 70's when more effort was put on function and not so much on the looks. Maybe that was considered to look more modern compared to the old decorated cast iron stoves.

my wife has been making no knead bread regularly in the dutch oven. it is easier than the english muffin
bread that i like to make. our house had a free standing wood stove that the seller took with her. a friend
of ours, has something similar. it is a big thing. wood goes in a side compartment. there is a big oven, and
several other smaller compartments. the friend was one of eleven kids, typical finnish farm family. thats
the stove her mother cooked on to feed the family. the wood stove we have is just for heating the house.
nothing beats wood heat.


keith