Research

Recipes from Ons kookboek 1943 translation under construction Alongside everyday bread, many specialities and festive dishes were baked in bread ovens. We have included here a few old recipes for oven delicacies that were baked in the old days. You can still make them today. Delicious! apple roll When baking a cake, you can use the dough remains to make an apple roll. Also called in Flemish “kattekop” (cat’s head), “bollebuis”, “krollemol”, etc. Apple rolls were a pure indulgence for small children. There was always room in the oven for a few “krollemollen”. The recipe is simplicity itself.

Baking the bread The dough balls are put in the oven in rows using a baker’s peel. They cannot be put right up against one another as the dough will still expand. They must not touch the walls either as they will burn. The bread has to be put in quickly, as the first ones will start baking while the others are put in. Furthermore, the baker has to act quickly to prevent the oven to cool down. A little flour on the baker’s peel stops the dough balls sticking to it. When the bread is in the oven, the oven door is closed to keep in the heat and also the steam. While baking, some of the water in the dough evaporates. This vapour “settles” on the bread as the oven cools, giving the bread a soft crust. The baking time depends on the weight of the bread and the type of grain used: white bread: around one hour rye bread, wholemeal bread: 1.5 to 2 hours flan: around a quarter of an hour (= the last quarter hour before the bread is ready)

Calculating the amount of loam for isolation By calculating the volume (of hollow half dome) we can calculate the necessary number of litres (volume) of loam mortar. The volume of the loam layer is calculated by subtracting the volume from the half dome with the volume of the hollow part. This becomes clear when using the following formula: Volume = (D³ - d³) x (3,1416 / 12), with D = outer diameter and d = inner diameter. If you have calculated the volume in cm³ then you have to divide the result by 1000 to get the volume in litres. Multiply the necessary volume by the number of litre components knowing that you need for approx. 1 m³ (1000 litres) loam mortar and a proportion 3 : 1/2 : 1 : 1 : loam soil: approx. 860 litres chaffed lime: approx. 140 litres Rhine sand: approx. 285 litres Chopped straw: approx. 285 litres (Horse urine: approx. 14 litres) Example (by means of building plan): d = 140 cm (this is the length of the oven (100 cm) + 2 x the thickness of the vault) D = 160 cm...

Building plan Gerrit Van den Dries, together with the MOT, created a design to build a fully functioning oven. We opted for a bread oven in which eighteen to twenty loafs of bread can be baked in one go. Download the building plans here. Do you want to build a smaller oven? During the Workshop build your own oven, we build a small oven for approximately 8 to 10 loafs of bread. Download these plans here. If you want to create your own construction design to your own liking, you can make use of following support tools: How many loafs of bread do you want to bake in the oven? measurements and shape of oven floor shape of vault measurements of oven mouth measurements of substructure

Choosing the right location This text can only be consulted in Dutch.

Supporting layerThis text can only be consulted in Dutch.

A history of bread