Photo by Lucie Monk
To what lengths would you go for a warm, airy loaf of homemade bread? Sure, there’s always thievery or an obsessive relationship with the nearest bakery. But Portland resident Kate Eldridge chose a different tack: she built herself a cob oven.
On her first go-round, she consulted Kiko Denzer’s Build Your Own Earth Oven, which she considers “the definitive work” on the subject. Her newly constructed oven, combined with her baking aptitude, resulted in golden hearth loaves and crisp pizza crusts.
But she didn’t stop there, nor did she stay in Portland with her handy new appliance. What started as a diligent baker’s quest to build herself a better oven became a vocation—building ovens for others. “I’m a baker by trade, but I’d been renovating houses for a while. It seemed like a natural fit,” said Eldridge.
To find her customer base, she turned to Help Exchange, or HelpX, an organization that helps connect skilled workers with the communities that need them. “For me, it’s a traveling tool,” said Eldridge. “You can immerse yourself in the culture. That’s how you get to know people—by working next to them.”
Through the HelpX network, Eldridge has voyaged as far as Indian orphanages and the mountains of Nepal, where her ovens were met with initial confusion (“What is she building?”) and then gratitude, once she provided the locals with a tutorial on the gift.
While she’s only been building cob ovens for five years, the technology itself is as old as dirt—almost. Cob is a mixture of clay, sand, and straw, and its use as an insulation material dates back to prehistoric times. In constructing houses, builders would roll the clay mixtures into long, sausage-like cylinders, which were then hurled up at the ceiling of the structure-in-progress, splattering into place. “It’s called ‘the throwing of the cob,’” said Eldridge. When she returned stateside from her Asian travels, Eldridge hesitated to settle back down in Portland with a regular job, so she looked toward South Louisiana. “I thought to myself, ‘Cajun Country, that’s kind of like still traveling abroad,’” joked Eldridge.
She had just completed work on a greenhouse for a woman in Breaux Bridge when NUNU, the arts and culture collective out of Arnaudville, Louisiana, made a serendipitous post on HelpX: they were seeking a cob oven builder. And so Eldridge migrated to Arnaudville, where she constructed a mammoth oven for the collective, forty-four inches in diameter. First event on the docket: a pizza party for ‘tweens and their parents.
When Baton Rouge artist Winifred Ross Reilly heard tell of Eldridge’s craftsmanship, she recruited the roving builder to a new job site: her backyard.
Eldridge tailors each oven to its environment, sourcing materials from her surroundings and taking careful note of the climate. “I’ve learned that all clay is different,” said Eldridge. Before she gets to work, she molds together multiple samples to gauge the ideal ratio of sand to clay for the specific oven and its habitat.
She even packs the foundation with the client’s “yard junk” (a benefit that thrilled Reilly to no end). “The foundation’s got to be very solid. It’s going to hold a lot of weight,” said Eldridge. The oven she built for Reilly—with a diameter of thirty-two inches compared to NUNU’s forty-four—rang in at just under a ton.
Once the foundation is leveled at the proper height, Eldridge puts down the first layer of sand, followed by a layer of natural insulation consisting of straw dipped in watered-down clay, or clay slip. She then puts down a smattering of beer bottles, which provide further insulation, as well as air pockets. “They say bottles are recycled, but that requires so much energy. So here we’re reusing.”
She tops the bottles with more natural insulation and sand and then tamps down the mass with firebricks. “That’s one of the few things I ask people to buy.”
“Now here’s the clever bit,” grinned Eldridge—she compresses a dome of sand on top of the bricks, which provides the mold for the oven and will be excavated before the first firing. “Some people weave baskets for the mold, then when they fire the oven for the first time, [the basket] just burns out.”
“And the fire hardens the clay,” added Reilly, whose vantage point of Eldridge’s work allowed her to take notes on every step of the process and help out whenever she could.
“When I hired [Eldridge] to come, she told me ‘You can work as much or as little as you want. I’m going to get it done,’” said Reilly.
The oven itself is formed from further coats of clay and insulation. Eldridge uses cob in the final sculptural layer; the addition of straw provides tensile strength. “Then we put a lime plaster over it, to protect it from the elements. Other plasters do nothing for you in terms of protection,” said Eldridge.
Once the lime plaster is dyed terracotta and the chimney is placed, an oven is born. A gorgeous cob oven now graces the Reillys’ backyard, an earthly wonder doubling as an appliance.
As for Kate Eldridge? She has skills, and she will travel. She’s just waiting for your call.
Details. Details. Details. HelpX helpx.net NUNU Arts and Culture Collective 1510 Bayou Courtableau Highway Arnaudville, La. nunucollective.org
